Sapa is famous for its rich cuisine with a plenty of unique dishes. While the white sticky rice is a popular dish of people in the lowland in your Vietnam tours, the five-color sticky rice is a special kind of sticky rice in Sapa. Let’s discover some interesting things about this well-known dish!
1/ The origin and the name of the five-color sticky rice
Tay is one of the most major ethnic groups in Sapa. In your Sapa tours, you will have a chance to discover about their culture through their custom, their cuisine and their daily life. As for the cuisine, the five-color sticky rice is one of the most must-have traditional dishes to be served on the occasion of New Year, May 5, ceremonies or when welcoming the guests. In fact, it is called “the five-color sticky rice” because it is made of the five different kinds of sticky rice with five distinctive colors, including red, yellow, blue, black and white. The five colors represent the five elements. To be specific, yellow is the color of the earth, green is the color of the wood, red is the color of the fire, white is the color of the metal and black is the color of the water. Depending on each region, people can mix these colors or use another color instead of the five basic colors. However, the predominant colors must be red, yellow and green.
2/ The cooking process of the five-color sticky rice
In order to make the five-color sticky rice, people have to soak the glutinous rice in the water for 6 to 8 hours so that the rice can bloom. Then, they divide it into five parts corresponding to five colors. To dye the sticky rice naturally, it is quite simple and easy by using some common vegetables and fruits from the local forests. Specifically, the red color is made the baby jackfruit or red leaves, the green one is from the ginger leaves or the grapefruit peel, the black one is from the ash mixed with the lime water, the yellow one is from the turmeric and the purple one is from the elderberries.
After finishing the dyeing process, people will move to the last stage that is the arrangement of color and the decoration. This step requires so many skills and the cleverness from the cook to get the most delicious five-color sticky rice. Usually, the most easy-to-fade color will be at the bottom, followed by the other colors, and the white color is in the topmost position. Especially, people decorate it in various ways. Some popular shapes are the flowers, the terraced rice fields or the towers. In the belief of Tay people, the more colorful and standard the sticky rice of this family is, the more prosperous they will be in this year.
3/ The flavor of the five-color sticky rice
The five-color sticky rice has a unique flavor. When tasting this dish, you can scent the natural fragrance from the forest leaves in the very clear way. Also, the color of this dish is very eye-catching so it is impossible to not try enjoying it once in your Sapa tours.
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