This Sauteed Corn in Brown Butter (Bap Xao Bo) is one of the famous street foods in Vietnam. It's super easy and fast to make. Fresh corn kernels are sauteed in flavorful brown butter and accompanied by delicious ingredients. Those add-on ingredients included but not limited to: dried shrimps, beef jerky, quail eggs, and other fried meat.
I’ve been making a lot of Artichoke Herbal Tea for this super hot and humid weather. Drinking the tea really helps to cool down my body temperature. Because of large amount of corn silks I used for brewing, eventually I ended up with many corn ears. So what to do with these corns, I talk to myself for several days. Grilling? Good idea, but I have to grill each individually and there is no way I could spend hours to finish more than 15 corn ears. Boiling? I can boil them in bulk but still need to eat one by one, and I don’t think my teeth are happy about this plan. Then there was a sparkling idea inside my head, sauteed corns, ah ha, that’s it, how didn’t I think about this earlier?
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Sauteed corns in brown butter (bap xao bo) was one of the famous after-school street foods for high school students. We were all drooling over them back then. There was nothing could make me happier than a giant to-go box of sauteed corns with dried shrimp every afternoon. Yup, my happiness was simple as that. Bring me a big bowl of corns with dried shrimp then I laugh with you for whole day.
My recipe today has a little twist. Instead of using only dried shrimp like a traditional street food, I also added beef jerky to enhance its ‘street-food’ factor. Moreover, I decided to use beurre noisette to bring the flavor to the next level. Beurre noisette is fancy French for brown butter. I know what you’re thinking right now, why didn’t I use brown butter from the beginning instead of these weird words that I might not know how pronounce them correctly, right? No, you were wrong. I know how to say these, want me to prove? Send me a private message with your phone number, I’ll call and say the words to you. I promise.
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Don’t you agree with me that regardless of what we cook, as long as its name involves with French cooking term, it becomes more elegant and fancy? That explains why I carefully spent a lot of time to learn every single French term in Culinary school. I wish speaking and understanding cooking terms and food names are counted as a language, then I can put “fluent in 4 languages” on my resume. Damn, that could’ve been really awesome for me. Too bad, reality is I can’t just talk to a native French speaker by only use cooking and food words. They might think either I’m crazy or I have a big affair for eating.
Back to beurre noisette, it’s super easy to make, if you have butter, a pan and a wooden spoon or spatula, then you good to go. The name speaks for itself, you cook until butter turned brown, that’s it. I did add few extra topping to my sauteed corn in brown butter (bap xao bo) to make it more fascinating: boiled quail eggs, fried shallots, shredded dried meat, cilantro and spicy sauce. I need this delicious and lips smacking corns so badly and you too need this in your life!
Sauteed Corn in Brown Butetter (Bap Xao Bo)
Ingredients
- 2 c corn kernels
- ¼ c dried shrimp chopped
- ¼ c beef jerky chopped
- 2 oz brown butter see instruction below
- fried shallot as needed
- quail eggs boiled, as needed
- shredded dried meat as needed
Instructions
Make beurre noisette (brown butter)
- In a small pan, heat cubed butter gently over low heat. Use spatula or wooden spoon to stir butter to help it melt evenly. When butter melted completely, raise the temperature to medium high. Make sure to keep eyes on your butter pan all the time. Scrape the sides and bottom to prevent butter from burning. When the butter starts to foam, give it a stir. Butter starts to turn brown at this point, to check the color, you can scoop a little amount onto a white plate to see. When you’re happy with the level of browning butter, transfer it right away to a heatproof bowl, keep stirring to cool down butter. Hot melted brown butter can be used immediately or store in an air tight container in a cooler for future use.
Make sauteed corn
- In a medium pan, heat 1 tbsp vegetable oil on medium high heat. Add corn kernels and saute for few minutes. Keep the heat at medium high level at least to prevent water come out.
- Add dried shrimp and beef jerky and cook for another 2 minutes, followed by chopped green onions. Before turn off the heat, drizzle brown butter over sauteed corn. Stir to distribute brown butter evenly.
- Serve hot, topped with dried shallot, quail eggs, and shredded dried meat. Enjoy!
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