Vietnamese Duck Noodle Soup (Mi Vit Tiem) features slippery noodles, fall-off-the-bone duck legs, and a dark broth. Learn the easy method to cook this complexed dish at home in this post.
What is Vietnamese Duck Noodle Soup (Mi Vit Tiem)?
In Saigon, it is not difficult to find a diner with mi vit tiem on the menu. I heard that this duck noodle soup was created by people with Chinese origin in the South of Vietnam. A bowl of mi vit tiem often consists of yellow noodles in a dark broth and a fall-off-the-bone duck leg, which you can easily use chopsticks to pick out the meat.
What sets this duck noodle soup apart from other noodle soups in Vietnamese cuisine is its dark broth and its strong flavors. The soup contains some herbal ingredients, so it is also considered healthy.
Southern Vietnamese people often go out to eat this dish due to the amount of ingredients and time needed to cook the dish at home. My Saigonese chef friend shared with me an easy way to cook mi vit tiem at home that retains the authentic flavors while being more suitable for a home kitchen. I’m very happy to share it with you today.
Related: another Vietnamese noodle soup with duck you may want to try is this bun mang vit (duck and bamboo shoot noodle soup).
Ingredients
The first ingredient you will need is duck legs. The general rule is one whole duck leg for each bowl of noodles. If you also have duck bones or duck necks, that’s even better. Add them to the broth for a stronger duck flavor.
Though the list of other ingredients is quite long, please don’t feel discouraged. Most of them can be purchased at regular grocery stores or Amazon, and just a few require a trip to Asian grocery stores.
- seasonings: soy sauce (I use Kikkoman), oyster sauce (I use Lee Kum Kee) and dark soy sauce (I use Lee Kum Kee)
- spices and aromatics: garlic, shallots, onion, ginger, five-spice powder, dried shiitake mushrooms, star anises, black cardamom pod, coriander seeds (or fresh cilantro roots or stems)
- herbal medicine ingredients: red dates, goji berries
So you can see that this duck noodle soup requires way more ingredients than, for example, Vietnamese chicken noodle soup (pho ga). The full restaurant version even requires some harder-to-find ingredients such as dried tangerine peel and processed rehmannia root.
For noodles, you can use yellow wheat-based noodles you like such as egg noodles or ramen-style noodles. Rice noodles will not work in this dish.
How to Cook Vietnamese Duck Noodle Soup (Mi Vit Tiem) at Home
In restaurants, the duck legs will be fried, then simmered in the broth and some places even fry the legs again before serving. The homemade method to cook this Vietnamese duck noodle soup is quite straightforward and less messy.
First, we need to prep the duck legs. Whenever cooking duck at home, Vietnamese cooks like to rub the meat with a lot of crushed ginger and some rice wine to get rid of any gamy odors. After that, we marinate the duck and broil until golden.
Once the duck skin is blistered and golden/darkened, we will simmer the duck legs with all other ingredients to make the broth. The duck legs should be simmered until very tender and easy to pick out from the bone. It takes me about 80-90 minutes to cook the broth.
Simmering the duck legs will render out quite a lot of fat, and I usually try to skim off most of the duck fat from the broth while cooking. We don’t need all that fat, just enough to retain flavors.
There’s an extra step some places in Saigon do after simmering. They would remove the duck legs from the broth, pat dry and fry quickly to make the skin crispy. This step is definitely not a must.
It is common to add some blanched green vegetables such as baby bok choy to the noodle bowls when you serve them. You can enjoy it as lunch or light dinner. Detailed measurements and instructions are in the recipe card below.
I’d love to hear what you think about the dish, so please feel free to leave a comment. New recipes are added every week so let’s connect on Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram for the latest updates. You can find my collection of Vietnamese recipes here.