Grilled Chicken Bahn Mi

The bahn mi....Vietnamese street food and perfect sandwich in my opinion...tangy, salty, a bit sweet and a tad spicy topped with in the best herb cilantro! I am a sandwich lover and if I had to pick a favourite style of food it would most defiantly be Asian food in general, Mexican or my mother in-laws cooking in general is a close second. The flavour profile of most Asian food is well balanced and packed with flavour. The bahn mi sandwich checks all the boxes for me. Now, I do have to say making a bahn mi is not a quick throw together sandwich, it takes a bit of planning and prep before hand, but that being said the components of the sandwich can be prepared the night before and the day of eating cook the chicken and assemble the sandwiches pretty quickly.

Marinading your chicken is essential! The chicken in a bahn mi is marinaded to perfection for at least 4 hours ahead of time. I would do the morning of or the night before. Start with slicing up your chicken. I like to do this partially frozen as it's easier to slice thin and uniform. I prefer to slice up my chicken into the final size now because it gives the marinade a lot more surface area to coat, but does make grilling a bit tricky. I think it's worth it, but if you want an easier time grilling and a slightly less tasty sandwich you can keep the chicken breast (or thigh, or even pork if you want) whole. Add chicken to a large zip top bag.

Grab yourself a medium bowl and add:

• 1/4 cup of fish sauce (don't be scared, I know it smells but its incredible and the bahn mi wouldn't be a bahn mi without it)
• 1/4 cup of soy sauce
• 2 tbsp of honey (this helps the marinade caramelize and stick to the chicken during cooking)
• 1 tbsp brown sugar (so does this!)
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 1 shallot minced
• 1 sprig of lemongrass finely sliced (if you need a tutorial on how to use lemongrass here is a helpful video). I choose to just hit the lemongrass with my knife and cut into rings much like a green onions. 
• 1-2 tsp of lime zest (i just used a vegetable peeler and peeled off a few pieces and banged it up a bit with my knife to release the oils and tossed it in.
• 1-2 cloves of garlic minced
• 2 tsp minced fresh ginger

Mix everything well and add to the zip top bag with the chicken. Place in the fridge 4 hours - overnight. 

Next up your pickled vegetables. Traditionally the bahn mi would be served with pickled carrots and daikon radish (or Lo Bok). A daikon radish is a large white root that looks a lot like a over grown white carrot but has a mild radish flavour. Unfortunately my local grocery stores on this fine Sunday were all out of daikon and our local Asian/West Indian grocery store was closed. I opted for just plain red radishes and the pickle mix turned out great, so its a great option if you're having trouble finding the traditional daikon. I made a larger batch of pickled vegetables but you could half the vegetables and vinegar mix if you just want enough for your sandwiches this time. It doesn't keep for very long, maybe a week. You will need:

-1 lime sliced (I used the same lime I took the zest from when preparing the marinade)

-1 cup carrots cut into fine match sticks (I buy them like this because i'm lazy)

-1 cup daikon radish cut into matchsticks (or regular radishes sliced thinly)

Add everything to your jar and grab a small sauce pan. In the sauce pan add 1 cup of water, 1 cup of white vinegar and 1 cup of white sugar. Bring this to a simmer and simmer until the sugar has all dissolved. This won't take long. Turn off and pour over your vegetable mix. Let the vegetable mix sit on the counter until it cools, then put in the fridge for at least an hour but I would suggest 4.

Now prepare your Sriracha mayo. Simply add 1 cup of mayonnaise to a small bowl, add 1 tsp Sriracha (you may add more if you want it to be spicy, the 1 tsp will give it a slight heat but nothing someone that doesn't like spice couldn't handle. I would suggest tasting before adding more). Finally squeeze the juice of 1/2 of a lime in, mix well and cover and refrigerate until sandwich time. This can be done last minute if you need to. 

Cook your chicken (or whatever meat you chose). Grill over a medium-high heat grill, while cooking for the first bit baste your chicken with the marinade left over. Once your chicken is cooked through remove from grill. If you're having an issue with some of the chicken being too small I would suggest a grill cage or what I did is just added a pizza pan that has holes in it on the grill to hold the smaller pieces without them getting lost in between the grill. I say I did it like I actually grilled the chicken...but I didn't....Jay did. Our bbq is on the fritz and makes a scary noise so I make Jay do it. 😁 Plus he's actually very good at it.

Now assembly. My mouth is actually watering while I'm writing this which is making me super happy I have left overs! It's only 8am BUT fun fact in Vietnam they would typically have a bahn mi sandwich as breakfast or a snack as it was considered "too dry" for lunch or dinner. The addition of the Sriracha mayo is more of a western thing. Okay okay sorry I got side tracked, on to the assembly:

Thinly slice some cucumber and wash and dry a handful of cilantro. I'm using a chaibatta type bun, my local grocery stores do not sell the traditional bahn mi, I think the closest to the traditional would be a baguette cut down into sandwich rolls, but the baguettes at my store are almost always too stale for this in my opinion. I really like a chaibatta type bun it's chewy and holds up to all the ingredients well.  

Whatever bun you choose, coat both sides with your Sriracha mayo.

Add your chicken

Top the chicken with some of your pickled vegetables (minus the lime), slices of cucumber, and cilantro.  Give everything a few dashes of soy sauce and pop the top on.

I really hope you love this sandwich as much as I do. Here is a full printable version of my Grilled Chicken Bahn Mi.