Yin and Yang philosophy in Vietnamese cooking

Vietnamese people divided the food to be Yin (for the cold food) and Yang (for the hot food). The cold and hot here it is not for the temperature but for the influence of the food to your body as well as to the environment around you. For example, we need to limit of having the hot food in the summer time and cold food in the winter but should do in the opposite way. The cold food can be in some material such as: marrow quash, cabbage, lettuce , water melon, fish and seafood… This food will make your body and stomach feel cold when you have it and we need to balance by adding the Yang spices like ginger, chilly, pepper, garlic …. while cooking. It not only for the good taste, but more important, it good for your body as well as suitable to environment or weather around you as well.

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The same for opposite way, when you are cooking the hot food, we need to add the Yang spices in to the food to balance. And for thousand years, from generation to generation, naturally, we learnt how to cook on this way, even did not notice about the influence
 of Yin and Yang philosophy in this. And this is the biggest identity of our cuisine in Vietnam. So the good food in Vietnam also can be like a medicine, that can help you to cure one of the problems in your body.

The ideal meal of Vietnamese not only need to be balance in the way of cooking, but there are also many other conditions to be balanced. For example, we need to have the food balance with the weather, in the winter, it is much better to have the hot food. It will keep your body warm and give you more energy against the cold. The same way, in the summer time, we have lots of different food to keep you cooler from the weather. The setting and the atmosphere of the meal also very important for the good meal, and we also need to balance it.

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Five element correspondence:

More intensive, you can see cooking style in Vietnam also have very good influence from five elements. The cooking bases on five different tastes:
sour (wood), sweet (Earth), spicy (metal), salty (water) and bitter (fire) corresponding to five organs : gall bladder, large intestine, small intestine, stomach and urinary bladder.
Vietnamese dishes also include five types of nutrients: powder, water or liquid, mineral elements, protein and fat.
Vietnamese cooks try to cook and decorate their food by five colors: black (earth) white (water), yellow (Metal), green (wood), red (fire) and in their dishes.
The perfect dish dishes in Vietnam need to appeal five senses when serving:  the beautiful decoration to catch your eyes, the crispy sound for your ears when serving the food, the great smell from the herbs stimulate tour nose, the beautiful taste from the food and the sauces for your tongue and the feel from you finger and your lips when having the finger food.

Identity of Vietnamese Cuisine:

Vietnamese cuisine is combination of very fresh recipes, allots of fresh herbs and spices flavored by Fish Sauce – the traditional sauce of Vietnamese people. Pork, chicken, beef, duck, sea food and tofu are very popular material in Vietnamese Cuisine. With the strong influence from Buddhism, Vietnamese Cuisine also having great selection  of vegetarian food, and sometime they can cook them taste like non vegetarian one. Two most famous dishes of Vietnamese Cuisine to the world is Pho ( the authentic rice noodle soup with beef or chicken) and Spring Roll.