Fresh Spring Rolls Recipe – Hanoi Style Phở Cuốn, cooking class, Saigon, Vietnam. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

Vietnamese Fresh Rice Noodle Rolls Recipe – Hanoi Style Phở Cuốn

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This Vietnamese fresh rice noodle rolls recipe or Hanoi pho cuon recipe kicks off our series of Vietnamese spring roll recipes. These filling rolls can be eaten as appetisers before a main or served alongside other Vietnamese dishes sharing-style or family-style as we eat here in Southeast Asia.

You probably thought I was going to kick off this series of Vietnamese spring roll recipes with a gỏi cuốn recipe, seeing those fresh, fragrant spring rolls were responsible for getting us hooked on Vietnamese food.

I thought I’d start with this Vietnamese fresh rice noodle rolls recipe or pho cuon Hanoi recipe – more correctly, Phở cuốn Hà Nội – as I just returned from Hanoi, Vietnam, where we ended the 22-day Vietnam Culinary Tour I was hosting, and they were still on my mind.

Vietnamese Fresh Rice Noodle Rolls Recipe – Hanoi Style Pho Cuon Recipe

Vietnamese fresh rice noodle rolls or Hanoi style pho cuon is essentially a street food snack in Vietnam that you can buy on the street or in a simple eatery that probably specialises in these. You’ll also find them in restaurants and that’s where you’d typically see them outside of Vietnam.

You could serve these Vietnamese fresh rice noodle rolls as an appetiser before a main course or serve them alongside a handful of other dishes if you’re feeding a family or group of friends and eating family-style as we do here in Southeast Asia.

They also make great finger food if you’re throwing a party or having an Asian-themed barbecue. Look out for Terence’s series of Cambodian barbecue recipes, which he’s starting soon, for ideas.

For most of the Vietnamese spring roll recipes I’m going to share here, you just need to buy the dry spring roll sheets or wraps, however, for these you need to use fresh rice noodle roll sheets.

If you don’t live in Southeast Asia and can’t buy fresh rice noodle sheets from a local market or supermarket as we can here in Cambodia, head to a market in your nearest Chinatown (such as Sydney’s Chinatown in Australia), a suburb where the Vietnamese community settled (like Richmond, Melbourne or Cabramatta, Sydney, in Australia) or a good Asian supermarket or grocery store.

If you still can’t find them, then you’re going to have to make them…

Notes on Making Vietnamese Fresh Rice Noodle Sheets Recipe

Making the Vietnamese fresh rice noodle sheets or wraps isn’t all that hard to do once you get the hang of it. We’ve posted a recipe for making the fresh rice noodle sheets, which we learnt in Vietnam.

What we love about these fresh rice noodle sheets is that they can also be used to make fresh Vietnamese pho noodles for soup. So if you’re going to have some friends over for a Vietnamese feast you might wish to serve bowls of pho as well.

Our recipe for the fresh rice noodle sheets makes a big batch so you can divide the finished fresh rice noodle sheets and use half for this Hanoi style pho cuon recipe and keep half aside to cut into noodles for your Vietnamese pho noodle soup. We’ll be posting a recipe for that, too, soon.

Note that if you’re going to separate half of the rice noodle sheets to make pho noodles, all you need to do is cut the noodle sheets into 1cm strips using a knife on a flat surface or even scissors to make them. They’re that easy. You can them keep them in a bowl in the fridge until your broth is ready.

Vietnamese Fresh Rice Noodle Rolls Recipe – Pho Cuon Hanoi Recipe (Phở Cuốn Hà Nội)

Fresh Spring Rolls Recipe – Hanoi Style Phở Cuốn, cooking class, Saigon, Vietnam. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

Vietnamese Fresh Rice Noodle Rolls Recipe – Hanoi Style Phở Cuốn

This Vietnamese fresh rice noodle rolls recipe is a recipe for Hanoi Style pho cuon (in Vietnamese, Phở cuốn Hà Nội) which has been adapted from a recipe we learned to make at Hanoi Cooking Centre in Vietnam five years ago.
Prep Time 30 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Total Time 1 hour
Course Appetiser
Cuisine Vietnamese
Servings made with recipe20 Serves 4-6 people
Calories 210 kcal

Ingredients
 
 

  • 400 g flat rice noodle sheets
  • 200 g beef fillet - thinly sliced bite-size pieces
  • 2 garlic cloves - finely chopped
  • 1 small butter lettuce - separate leaves
  • 1 cup fragrant herbs - mint, coriander, basil, coriander (cilantro)
  • 1 carrot - julienned
  • 1 cucumber - cut into thin strips, skin on, seeds out
  • 3 tablespoons fried shallots
  • Nuoc cham dipping sauce - see separate recipe

Instructions
 

  • Prepare your fresh lettuce, herbs, carrot, and cucumber, and set aside.
  • Stir-fry the beef in a hot wok with a little vegetable oil and finely chopped garlic.
  • When just cooked through, remove the beef from the wok and set aside.
  • Place one flat rice noodle sheet onto a board.
  • On one side of the rice noodle sheet place in a neat line a lettuce leaf, then on top of this some fresh herbs (just a few leaves of each), 2-3 pieces of beef, then five strips each of the julienned carrot and cucumber.
  • Holding the filling in place, carefully roll to form a long, fat, cigar shape. As you’re using fresh rice noodle sheets, there’s no need to tuck the ends over as you would with dry sheets.
  • Set the finished roll aside onto a serving plate and repeat until all the mixture has been used.
  • Sprinkle fried shallots on top of the rolls.
  • Serve with nuoc cham dipping sauce.

Nutrition

Serving: 1gCalories: 210kcalCarbohydrates: 28.7gProtein: 12.5gFat: 5.2gSaturated Fat: 1.8gPolyunsaturated Fat: 2.7gTrans Fat: 0.7gCholesterol: 30mgSodium: 132mgFiber: 1.7gSugar: 6.2g

More of Our Vietnamese Spring Roll Recipes

Fresh prawn and pork spring rolls – classic gỏi cuốn recipe

How to make fresh rice noodle sheets for phở cuốn Hà Nội

Deep fried Hanoi-style spring rolls – classic nem rán Hà Nội recipe (these are the fried spring rolls that are used for bun cha)

More Spring Roll Recipes

You’ll find more spring roll recipes in these terrific cookbooks.

Vietnamese Street Food by Tracey Lister and Andreas Pohl – the former owners of Hanoi Cooking Centre and authors of several Vietnam cookbooks have ten Vietnamese spring roll recipes in this book, which is one of our favourites. When we last met Tracey she was talking of writing a book 100% dedicated to spring rolls. Fingers crossed.

The Songs of Sapa, Stories and Recipes from Vietnam by Luke Nguyen – the Aussie-Vietnamese chef who splits his time between Sydney and Saigon and owns the excellent GRAIN Cooking Studio has half a dozen different Vietnamese spring roll recipes in this beautiful book that charts his discovery of dishes during his travels through Vietnam.

Street Food Asia by Luke Nguyen – you’ll find some spring roll recipes in this cookbook on street food snacks from Vietnam and beyond.

As usual, we’d love to hear from you if you make our Vietnamese fresh rice noodle rolls recipe. Please let us know how it turned out in the comments below and share a pic with us on Instagram.

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A travel and food writer who has experienced over 70 countries and written for The Guardian, Australian Gourmet Traveller, Feast, Delicious, National Geographic Traveller, Conde Nast Traveller, Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia, DestinAsian, TIME, CNN, The Independent, The Telegraph, Sunday Times Travel Magazine, AFAR, Wanderlust, International Traveller, Get Lost, Four Seasons Magazine, Fah Thai, Sawasdee, and more, as well as authored more than 40 guidebooks for Lonely Planet, DK, Footprint, Rough Guides, Fodors, Thomas Cook, and AA Guides.

6 thoughts on “Vietnamese Fresh Rice Noodle Rolls Recipe – Hanoi Style Phở Cuốn”

  1. Finding no market selling fresh rice noodle sheets was a blessing in disguise as I was pushed to make them from scratch. I never thought I’ll be able to do pho cuon given my poor rolling skills, so thanks for sharing the recipe. Great write-up about the dish as well. :)5 stars

  2. Once cooked and they’re cold, they’ll definitely keep for a day or so and shouldn’t stick together but to be sure you can brush on a little oil. My advice is to use some of this for the fresh rolls and if you have any left over, you can cut them into noodles with scissors or a knife and make a noodle dish. There is a delicious Vietnamese-Cambodian dish with these cold noodles, lots of fresh salad and fragrant herbs, and a coconut sauce that’s delicious that I’ll write up and post. They’re served with fried spring rolls (nem) and I have a recipe for those here, too.

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