It’s got that irresistible crispy, yet delicate, golden brown crust. And the inside of the bánh xèo is filled with delicious flavors: pork and shrimp, and sprinklings of mung bean, onions and bean sprouts.
This crowd pleaser is a hot-off-the-pan, hands-on food meant to be wrapped in veggies and dipped in a flavorful sauce. Vietnamese bánh xèo, often called Vietnamese pancakes, or Vietnamese crêpes, are great for family style dinners and you can prep the batter a night ahead of time. Lets get to sizzling!
Bánh xèo seems to be designed to be eaten as a family. The batter, filling ingredients, and veggies aren’t complicated to prepare, but they don’t make sense to be bought or made to be eaten by yourself.
You don’t just buy 1/4 pound of pork, 8 shrimps, or buy 1/4 head of lettuce. You kind of have to bump the volume to make each step worth the prep and to me, meals that are shared are a lot more fun anyway.
These crêpes take a little bit of prep time and organization, then you can just keep knocking these guys out faster than people can eat them.
What does bánh xèo mean?
I always found the name of bánh xèo interesting because the “xèo” refers to the sizzling sound it makes when you cook the batter. Its name loosely means “sizzling cake.” The sound is much more obvious when the batter hits a hot pan, but here’s some footage of one hissing from the heat (turn the sound up!):
I’ve heard many folks refer to bánh xèo as that “Vietnamese egg dish” and it always took me a while to figure out what they were talking about, until they mention the filling has pork, shrimp, mung bean, bean sprouts and some green onion.
These crêpes are yellow and kinda look like omelettes–but! There are actually no eggs in here. It’s just turmeric powder that colors em yellow!
Using wheat and rice flour
It’s been brought to my attention that saying “wheat flour” causes much confusion on my pandan waffle recipe, so lets clarify it for this recipe too! Wheat flour is what you’ve been buying all your life to bake cookies and bread, and it’s what grocery stores simply label as “all purpose flour.” We call it wheat fluor here to differentiate from the rice flour.
Traditional bánh xèo was probably made with only rice flour and no wheat flour. If you want to go full on traditional, you can replace all of the wheat flour in the recipe with rice flour only and it will work. BUT…
Here’s why you want to use wheat flour:
- It makes the bánh xèo crispy in a different and better way in my opinion.
- It helps develop that nice browning color as it crisps up in the pan.
- And if you’re making the batter ahead of time and reheating it, the results turn out better if there’s wheat flour in it.
Troubleshooting the batter
The most common problem with the batter is that people aren’t getting it to crisp up. Here are the main things to check to help ensure crispy bánh xèo:
- Weigh your flour instead of scooping it. This ensures the recipe was followed accurately, and that extra flour wasn’t added due to compression caused by using a scooper.
- Make sure the batter is not too thick. Whether or not you already measured out flour by weight, check for its consistency. When the recipe calls for you you pour some batter into the hot pan, and you tilt it around, the batter should freely flow and not feel like a thick pancake batter. If it’s too thick, thin the batter container out with a tablespoon of water, mix, then test. Repeat if necessary.
- Adjust your cooking times. The times I added in the recipe card are estimates that work for me, but everyone’s stove is different.
- Reduce the amount of the covered cooking time step. Sometimes if this lid-covered step goes on for too long, condensation can drip back into the pan, making it more difficult to crisp the bánh xèo.
- Increase the amount of time the batter cooks in the step after the lid is removed. This final step is uncovered, so steam can escape and the batter can crisp.
- Add more oil. During the final uncovered cooking step, not having enough oil can prevent batter and pan contact. You can brush on a little more oil around the edges if you think it’s not crisping enough.
- Double check the water and coconut cream measurements. Too much coconut cream can prevent the batter from crisping.
- Replace the water with carbonated water. For an extra boost, this can help. It’s not meant to fix the other issues that should be accounted for, but it can help in some cases.
- Try a different pan. A nonstick, or carbon steel, or cast iron pan with good coats of seasoning on them should work well. I haven’t completely narrowed it down on why some pans simply fail, but would guess that the ones causing issues are ones that are too light or not transferring heat evenly.
How to eat bánh xèo
Bánh xèo is food meant to be eaten with your hands. You’ll always find a big plate of greens with a mix of herbs to go with it.
- Cut or break off a small 2-bite size piece of bánh xèo. Single bite size is too small and time-consuming.
- Wrap it in a similarly sized piece of lettuce. You can substitute green leaf lettuce for the mustard greens in a pinch since it tastes good too.
- Add a little bit of each of the herbs. Mint is the only must-have herb in this dish with cilantro and Vietnamese perilla being the other commonly used ones, which you should really try to source if you can! Adding too much can overpower each bite, but you must choose your own path.
- Sauce it up! Make some incredibly flavorful nước chấm or Vietnamese dipping sauce for the final flavoring and seasoning touches. I like spooning this on for maximum control and less chance of me dropping ingredients into the sauce.
Batter storage and freshness
If you take care of it, this batter will stay fresh for about 4 to 6 days after you make it, so you can enjoy bánh xèo all week long if you’d like!
If you simply just want to make it ahead of time and just chill in the batter for a few days that’s completely fine, must make sure it’s in an air tight container.
However, if you plan to cook some one day, and save the rest for another day keep your original container and batch of batter clean. This means, don’t put any used ladles, spoons, forks, or anything else into the batter. It will be easier if you just pour out the batter you want to use into a separate container so the original one remains untouched. Just make sure you mix the batter up a bit before dividing it so all the ingredients are incorporated first.
For the freshest bánh xèo, you gotta cook these to order! They taste waay better this way. But of course this is not always possible. If you don’t have much batter or ingredients left that would be worth storing uncooked, you can cook the crepes / pancakes, fridge it and bake them to eat on another day. Just know the results won’t be as good as hot off the pan.
This dish is always a treat to me since I rarely get to eat it. It’s also an awesome choice to cook for a group because it’s affordable. You can spend $20 for enough crêpes / pancakes to satisfy 4-5 bellies!
How do you pronounce bánh xèo?
Bánh xèo is pronounced as “ban say-oh.” Phonetic spelling will only get you close, but need to hear it spoken to get the intonation spot on.
How do you make bánh xèo from scratch?
Bánh Xèo is basically a crêpe or pancake made from a basic blend of rice flour, turmeric, and coconut cream, along with other ingredients. The filling includes shrimp, pork belly, and bean sprouts. You can learn the best technique to make these Vietnamese crepes using my recipe above.
Where can I buy rice flour?
I usually get rice flour pre-made in bags at Asian grocery stores. If that’s not an option for you, health food stores like Whole Foods carries it. As a last resort, you can make it yourself if you have a nice blender, but we’ll save that for another post.
What is bánh xèo in English?
Xèo is onomatopoeia for the sizzle sound when the batter hits the hot pan, so bánh xèo loosely translates to “sizzling cake.”
Where did bánh xèo originate?
There are two types of bánh xèo. The central Vietnam style is smaller, broken into pieces, and wrapped in a rice paper. This larger style of bánh xèo originated from southern Vietnam and can be wrapped with leafy lettuce.
Bánh Xèo (Vietnamese Sizzling Pancakes / Crêpes)
Ingredients
Batter
- 255 g (1 3/4 c) rice flour
- 85 g (0.7 c) all-purpose flour
- 2-3 tsp turmeric
- 28 fl oz (3.5 c) water
- 14 fl oz (396.9 ml) coconut cream if unavailable, use coconut milk
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 sprig green onions chopped about 1/2" long
Filling
- 1 lb (453 g) shrimp, heads removed and deveined size 45/50 or 60/70
- 1.5 lb (680.39 g) pork belly
- 1 medium yellow onion thinly sliced
- 1.5 lb (680.39 g) bean sprouts
- 1/2 c dry mung beans optional
Vegetables
- 1 head mustard greens caỉ xanh
- 1 bunch mint
- 1 bunch cilantro
- 1 bunch Vietnamese perilla (tía tô) optional
Dipping sauce
Instructions
Prepare Batter
- Combine all batter ingredients except scallions in a large bowl for at least 3 hours, or overnight. Add scallions only right before making the crêpes.
Prepare Fillings
- Steam or soak mung beans in water until soft.
- Boil pork until cooked through and soft, then slice thinly.
- Remove shrimp heads and devein shrimp if desired.
- Wash bean sprouts and veggies.
Making Bánh Xèo – Each crêpe takes about 8-10 minutes
- On medium-high heat add 1-2 teaspoons of oil and some onions
- Immediately add a few pieces of pork and shrimp. Sauté, lightly mixing until very lightly browned and fragrant.
- Pour in some batter and quickly tilt & rotate the pan so the batter is evenly spread. Add more batter if it wasn't enough to cover the pan. There should only be a thin layer of batter that almost flakes off at the pan edges where it's thinner. If your batter doesn't do that and is too thick, add a few tbsp water to the batter and mix to thin it out.
- Lower the heat to medium. Add some mung beans, bean sprouts, and cover with a lid for about 3 minutes, or until bean sprouts are slightly cooked. The batter should also be slightly cooked and transparent around the edges. This step cooks the top side of the ingredients and batter while it steams since we won't be flipping the crepe.
- Remove the lid, lower heat to medium-low and wait for the crêpe to become crisp. This takes about 5-7 minutes. This step lets the ingredients fully cook through, including the batter. It also lets steam escape so the batter can crisp up. Brush on a little oil around the edges if you're not seeing or hearing enough batter to pan contact. Fold in half, transfer to a plate and serve immediately. For batter troubleshooting please see the troubleshooting section in the post above.
Oh my…. this looks amazing! I love the bold flavor combinations you’ve got going on here! I wish I had a big plate of this right now! 🙂
Pork and shrimp work well together and you see it in a lot of Vietnamese cuisine–I could use a few of these crepes myself right now :). Thanks a lot Kathleen!
Your banh xeo looks awesome, Huy! You achieved the perfect color on it and I bet it’s crispy and delicious! Finally, someone that adds mung beans to their banh xeo. I don’t recall seeing anyone else do this (especially on youtube) so I’m glad to see that my mom wasn’t totally a maverick in her cooking. LOL! I think I did a bit of research on it eons ago and found out that mung beans were added to compensate for lack of meat (not that we lacked meat in our banh xeo since I made them and I’m a big time carnivore!) The one other difference my mom made than others out there is that she used ground pork that is pre-seasoned and pre-cooked. Everyone else uses the sliced pork belly and shrimp. Regardless, it’s good eatin’ (unless you’re the only person slaving over those banh xeo for everyone else…like me!)
Do you not wrap yours in rice paper when you eat it? I learned that late in life and love it. Banh xeo was always messy eating as it fell apart when I dipped it but once I was shown how to wrap it up in rice paper, eating it became much more pleasurable (also the fact that I wasn’t cooking it helped, I’m sure!).
Anyway, thanks for such a great recipe!
Hey Hang, I never questioned the addition of mung beans, but the meat-substitute reasoning makes good sense. It tastes good with both though, haha maybe you’ll cut mom some slack now? 🙂
I did ponder pre-cooking the meat–it works if you par-cook it since it will still be cooking for a few minutes after with the batter. Ground meat can be good too, but I guess others like to indulge in the fattier pork belly too.
Interesting tip on the rice paper! I’ve never seen it served that way but yeah, banh xeo can be pretty messy haha. I just use more lettuce to keep it together and spoon the sauce on instead of dipping. As always, thanks for sharing!
banh xeo, I have just discovered it recently at a restaurant after having seen it on youtube. Now I am hooked but no mung bean for me please :). thanks for the recipe.
Hi Huy! Thank you for sharing this amazing dish. I definitely want to try it myself. When you say that the recipe requires all purpose wheat flour, did you mean whole wheat flour or unbleached flour? Thanks!
My husband and I love to make banh xeo at home and we’ve made it plenty of time me but too bad, we still can’t master it meaning our banh xeo is not crispy at all :(. We’ve tried different recipes in which we usually replaced water with beer to make the batter. Do you have any other tips for me? Does it matter what kind of pan is used? I’ll try your recipe next time to see if the banh xeo would be crisp. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for the recipe, but how much is a can of coconut cream/milk? There are so many sizes of cans! 🙂
Wow sorry about that, I’ll update the recipe! It’s for the common 14 oz/400 ml size.
Is your “ounce” measurement by weight or volume? Makes a bit of a difference…
It is by weight!
It’s great to see you add mung beans to the Banh Xeo. I am Europian in origin but grew up in the Vietnamese centre of Sydney, Australia, and have been eating and loving Vietnamese food all my life. I love yellow mung beans in this dish and was shocked to see most recipes online left them out. Thank you for the great recipe!
Hey Kirsty–yeah I agree ya gotta have some mung beans in this dish. Glad you enjoyed the recipe and thanks for reading!
Hello Huy, have you tried using beer instead of water or half beer and half water? With the batter, does it sit 3 hrs uncovered or covered? Thanks!
Hey Katelyn! I haven’t tried that yet. It’s pretty crispy as is but if you like a lighter batter it could be worth a shot. I’d cover just so stuff doesn’t fall into it, but it won’t matter too much. Hope that helps!
Looks awesome! If I don’t have tumeric what can I substitute that for?
Worked perfectly, thank you! I took liberties and added one egg to the batter when I had enough for 2 more crepes. Worked well to make for a ‘sturdier’ set. Overall a wonderful recipe that I will do over and over – one of those classic ones that get better each time you make it again! Perfect with a nice Bordeaux btw 🙂
Help. I used a non stick pan but I still had trouble removing crepe without making a bloody mess of it. Taste was delish presentation sucked.
Liv, did you use oil in your nonstick pan? I find that you still need to use a bit oil and I even squirt a couple drizzles towards the end while waiting for the crepe to crisp up. Unfortunately with this dish, there is no avoiding the oil. Hopefully all the herbs and lettuce we eat with it balances out the calories lol!
In your recipe, you say to pre-cook the pork but not the shrimp. Is that correct? Thank you for sharing your recipe!
Yup! Shrimp cooks fast so you don’t want to pre-cook them.
Hi Huy, thank you so much for this recipe….tested one with tapioca starch instead of wheat flour …of course it fell apart. 🙂 Also the pictures are very helpful, can’t wait to test on my family 🙂
Hi, Huy! I am Vietnamese and appreciate that your recipes are straight-forward and traditional. I made these crepes last weekend and couldn’t get enough – my husband requested them again this weekend. They are so fabulously yummy, we really like the mung bean addition! Thanks so much, keep your recipes coming!
I’ll be making this again for the fourth time tonight (along with bun thit nuong) following your recipe. I ALMOST have it down to perfection. Thanks for this website!
That’s so cool to hear Lance, thank you for sharing!
receipies that bring back memories….
Thank you Huy !Your recipe ảe so great and helpful !👍👍👍👍❤️❤️❤️❤️
Thanks Ngoc!
can I half this recipe? Or will the batter keep in the fridge for a day or so? I don’t know if we’ll be able to eat 12 crepes
Hi Maggie! Yes you can halve the recipe or store the batter for a few days in the fridge. It can last about a week in the fridge without spoiling if all the utensils and containers used to make this are kept clean.
Thank you! Kept it in the fridge and going to make some more the next few nights. The first attempt turned out great!
Happy to hear it worked out for you! 🙂
I’ve never used dry mung beans – is there any prep required? I.e. should they be soaked?
Yup they need to be soaked, or steamed until soft all the way through.
Hi Hungry Huy!
Cool recipe!! It’s looking delicious! My mom (Vietnamese) has quite the same, haha!
Cheers from Australia
Helene
AHHHHHHHH!!! Oh, PLEASE edit the recipe to read next to rice flour & wheat flour – *measured by WEIGHT!!!
— I had guests last night & made this with 9 oz (just over 1C.) rice flour, and 3oz regular wheat flour (just under 1/3C) —- and had the biggest sog of a kitchen disaster ever — reviewed recipe — had done everything right — and what I had to serve was a great-tasting soggy, soupy mess!! — looked at recipe again today & read the comments, still trying to figure out why the HUGE disaster…. then I see someone ask, “did you measure flours by volume (as I naturally did), or by weight?” — and you replied, “by weight!” I don’t have many kitchen disasters, but this was a doozie…
Sorry about that Beth :(!! I just updated the post so it labels the flours by grams so it is clearer.
Why add wheat flour? Not very authentic at all. I do 100% rice flour and they are crisp and golden.
Thanks for the comment Truc. You’re right that 100% rice flour is more authentic so if that’s your goal you can simply replace all the wheat flour in ths recipe with rice flour. We add wheat flour to match the improved taste achieved in restaurants and premade banh xeo mixes. Yes 100% rice is crispy, but the type of crisp and texture is different and slightly harder. If you plan to make this batter ahead of time, reheated batter will have better results with wheat flour too.
Thank you for the recipe! My Bánh xeo was delicious! Growing up my mom used to make it from a premixed bag sold at the local Vietnamese store, but I like the idea of making my own from scratch. I tweaked it a little by making my own rice flour, extra turmeric (for color) and beer to the batter. Supposedly beer helps make it more crispy. I found the consistency of the batter to be a little thick for my liking so I thinned it out with more water/beer. This could be because I blended my own rice flour. I’ve used this recipe twice now and it’s my go to Bánh xeo recipe. Thanks again!
Does anyone know the volume measurements for the flour? I don’t have a scale to do weight measured.
Hi SAC, I updated the recipe to include a volumetric measurement for the flour, but please know that when you scoop and measure this way it’s likely to be inaccurate.
Can the wheat flour be substituted with all purpose flour?
Hey Oanh! I labeled it ‘all purpose wheat flour’ to differentiate it from rice flour, but ap flour is wheat, so you’re good to go.
Made this for the first time and it was great! Easy to follow for someone like me, who loves cooking but wasn’t brought up around this delicious food
Bonjour,
J’adore le banh xéo. Merci pour la recette
Amitiés
Glad you enjoyed the banh xeo Lucie, thanks for your comment!
Can I use glutinous rice flour for the recipe?
Glutinous rice flour is not a substitute for rice flour, nope!
I tried these for the first time yesterday at a Vietnamese stand in Atlanta and immediately wanted to try to make them. This recipe was amazing! I did have crisping problems, but they were solved by continuing the cooking process. I think my pan may have been a bit big. Thank you for bringing this deliciousness into my life!
This was a truly excellent recipe! I made a vegan version of this with crispy tofu and mushrooms instead of the shrimp and pork. The batter became perfectly crispy in the nonstick pan with a little bit of oil and patience!
Tofu and mushrooms in this sound amazing Ellie! I’ll have to give it a shot.
I made this recipe for the 2nd time and it came out amazing. It brought back memories of when my mom would make this for me. I truly love your recipes. Ha my first attempt was a disaster because a not so nonstick pan any more. I bought a new one and boom success. Thank you for sharing
Just tried your recipe, nice and crispy, way better than the prepackaged flour ones. Thanks!!
Your recipe is impeccable. I have been making these for 20+ years now, always a big hit. If I don’t have bean sprouts, I use thinly sliced cabbage (raw). Works great. Also I always add a handful of chopped cilantro or basil just before folding.
Do note: Please PLEASE fix the spelling… It is crêpe, not crepê !!!!! LOL!
Amazing to hear how long you’ve been making these! and OMG just fixed the typo thanks!
I can confirm that this banh xeo recipe is fire. Thank you, Huy.
Made these for friends- so delicious and crispy!