Grilled larva - delicous food in Mekong delta

“Đuông” are the larva of beetles, often live in the inside top soft part of areca species trees. They can be found in Mekong Delta, especially in Ben Tre province. This kind of larva is keen on eating the cotyledons inside the top of coconut tree. There is a legend that this Southern grilled larva was tribute to Nguyen Dynasty under Tu Du Queen Mother and Nam Phuong Queen.

Every year, after mating season, the beetles choose a healthy coconut tree, pierce a hole and lay eggs. Larvae are hatched from those eggs, stay inside the top of coconut tree and eat the inside. Normally there are about 100 larvae in each coconut trees. They will make the tree die gradually. The owner has to chop the body of coconut tree to find the larvae. Each larva is as big as a human being’s thumb.

Previously đuông is a popular dish; however, it has nowadays been valuable, rare and expensive. The reason is that it is difficult to find them. Even old farmers who have been working on the farm for ages can only enjoy this dish two or three times in their lives.

Use two bars of bamboo to clamp the larvae. The bar of larvae then will be grilled on firing coal with frequent turning up and down. Keep grilling the bar until the larvae are all well cooked. Untie the bars, and put larvae on plate. Take a tamarind and bury it in the firing coal to make it cooked. Then peel the covering of tamarind, put it in a bowl and pour some fish sauce, sugar and monosodium glutamate in. The tamarind fish sauce is now ready. Enjoy the grilled with this fish sauce mixture.

Grilled larvae is eaten with lettuce, cabbage, basil, balm-mint and chili. Cover a grill larva by vegetable and eat with tamarind fish sauce. Enjoy sweetness of vegetable, fragrance of grilled larvae, sourness of tamarind fish sauce, and the pungency of chili. Although this dish is popular, many other delicate dishes cannot be as that tasty. Drink some soft wine or alcohol.

There is another way of cooking larvae. They are buried in fish sauce for a while. Then cover with wheat flour before being fried. Eating with lettuce and tomato.