Black Chung Cake: The quintessence of Tay cuisine

(TITC) – Black Chung cake is a traditional dish of the Tay people every traditional Tet holiday. The cake has a characteristic black color due to being dyed with charcoal from the núc nác tree, along with some typical spices of the mountainous region. Nowadays, black banh chung has become a specialty, a gift chosen by many tourists when coming to the northern mountainous provinces.

Photo: baolangson.vn

Black Chung cake also has the same ingredients as traditional green Chung cake in the plains such as sticky rice, pork belly, green beans, salt, pepper, and cardamom. The distinctive feature is the charcoal material of the núc nác tree (Oroxylum indicum). The charcoal is burned, then finely ground and mixed with water to form a black mixture. Glutinous rice is mixed with charcoal mixture until it turns black.

The most elaborate step in making black banh chung is burning núc nác into ashes and sifting the charcoal powder. Before wrapping the cake, people take the trunk of the núc nác tree, dry it, and burn it into charcoal. Careful families take the still red charcoal and put it in a fresh bamboo tube, wait for the inside to gradually burn into black charcoal, then take it out, crush it, and mix it with sticky rice to make black banh chung.

Photo: baolangson.vn

The second characteristic of black banh chung is the cardamom flavour. Cardamom is roasted, peeled, crushed and mixed into rice and meat as the filling in just the right amount to create a distinctive aroma for the cake. Therefore, although black chung cake has the same ingredients as green chung cake, the flavor is different.

Enjoying a piece of Bac Ha black chung cake, diners will feel the fatty taste of pork belly, the aroma of cardamom and sticky rice.

Black Chung Cake is an indispensable dish of the Tay people during traditional festivals and New Year. Black Chung Cake shows the Tay people’s respect for the deceased, both traditional and creative, imbued with the flavor of the mountains and forests.

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