Banh Mi Chao (Vietnamese Skillet Breakfast with Pate)
Vietnamese dishesBreads and SandwichesNationwideabout 25 minutes
Banh mi chao packs a whole breakfast into one small cast iron skillet. Rich pate, scored sausage that opens as it cooks, a soft yolked egg and a sweet sour tomato sauce all come together, ready for scooping up with crisp toasted bread.
The hardest part is the heat. A skillet that runs too hot sets the egg firm and dries the sauce at the edges. Cooking the tomato sauce separately, then spooning it over the skillet, is the key move. A common mistake is cracking the egg in while the pan is still too hot, which cooks the yolk through and takes away the soft center for dipping.
This batch weighs about 588g, at roughly 150 calories per 100g.
Method
Peel 5 cloves of garlic and 2 shallots, then mince them. Dice one tomato and cut the other into round slices. Slice the red horn chili on an angle, cut the spring onion into 5cm lengths, and thinly slice 1/4 onion.
Score a few diagonal cuts along the sausage so it opens up nicely as it cooks.
Make the tomato sauce: set a pan over the heat with 1 tablespoon of cooking oil, fry the minced shallot and garlic until fragrant, then add the diced tomato and stir until it breaks down. Add 3 tablespoons of ketchup, 2 tablespoons of water, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1/2 teaspoon of kOBE Monk Fruit Blend and 30ml of fish sauce, simmer 3 more minutes, then turn off the heat.
Set the cast iron skillet on the stove, add 1/2 tablespoon of cooking oil and 10g of unsalted butter, and heat until the butter melts.
Arrange the onion, 60g of pate and the sausage in the skillet, crack 1 chicken egg into one corner, then spoon the tomato sauce over.
Add the sliced tomato, spring onion, red horn chili and 1 soft cheese wedge, then sprinkle over a little ground pepper. Keep each item in its own corner so the skillet looks tidy.
Serve hot with bread toasted until crisp.
Tips
A small cast iron or nonstick skillet holds heat for a long time, so the dish stays hot down to the last bite.
Lowering the heat the moment the egg goes in keeps the yolk soft.
kOBE Monk Fruit Blend is a powder, so a sprinkle into the hot sauce dissolves right away with no long stirring.
Bread toasted crisp again just before serving is what makes the sauce worth dipping into.
Leftover tomato sauce keeps in a sealed container in the fridge for 3 days.
Need kOBE Monk Fruit Blend?
The recipe above is sweetened with kOBE Monk Fruit Blend, measured 1:1 like sugar. See the product page or send us a message.