Young Jackfruit Salad
Mít trộn
Quảng Nam's mít trộn — boiled young jackfruit shredded like meat, tossed with pork, shrimp, rau răm, and peanuts, scooped up on toasted sesame rice crackers.
By Vietnamese Cookbook Kitchen · April 11, 2026
Quảng Nam & Đà NẵngThe Lê Dynasty era, 1428–1789
Gỏi- Prep
- 30 min
- Cook
- 20 min
- Serves
- 4
- Level
- Beginner
In Quảng Nam the jackfruit tree is backyard infrastructure, and its unripe fruit — mít non, young jackfruit — has been kitchen material for as long as anyone has written about the region's food. Picked green, boiled, and pulled into shreds, it behaves less like fruit than like some vegetable ancestor of pulled pork, which is exactly how the salad uses it. Mít trộn ("mixed jackfruit") is the form Đà Nẵng and Hội An perfected: a heap of seasoned shreds under peanuts and fried shallots, eaten off shards of sesame rice cracker at low plastic tables, usually before five in the afternoon.
The technique is a single unglamorous verb: squeeze the boiled shreds until they are genuinely dry, then let them sit in the dressing before anything else joins. Jackfruit has no flavor to lose and enormous capacity to absorb — treat it like a sponge you are loading, not a vegetable you are dressing. The rau răm is not optional so much as definitional; its peppery bite is what keeps all that fiber and peanut from going flat. Then break a cracker and dig.
Squeeze the jackfruit like you mean it. Every tablespoon of water you leave in the shreds is a tablespoon of dressing they refuse to drink later.
Lời đầu bếp · A word from the kitchen
Ingredientsnguyên liệu
Serves 4
- 550 gcanned young green jackfruit in brine — one large can, drained weight about 280 g/10 oz — brine, never syrup; ripe sweet jackfruit is a different fruit entirely
- 150 gpork shoulder or belly, in one piece — about 5 oz
- 150 gsmall raw shrimp, peeled — about 5 oz
- 2 tbspfish sauce (nước mắm)
- 1 tbspsugar
- 1lime, juiced
- 1garlic clove, minced
- 1red chili, minced
- 1 bunchrau răm (Vietnamese coriander), leaves torn — the signature herb here; mint plus cilantro is the honest fallback
- 3 tbsproasted peanuts, roughly crushed
- 2 tbspcrispy fried shallots
- 4sesame rice crackers (bánh tráng mè) — toasted over a flame or 90 seconds in the microwave until blistered
Methodcách làm
Step 1: Simmer the pork and shrimp
Simmer the pork in salted water for 15 minutes, adding the shrimp for the last 2, then let both cool in the liquid so they season and stay juicy. Slice the pork thin, halve the shrimp lengthwise, and keep a few spoonfuls of the broth.
Step 2: Shred and squeeze the jackfruit
Simmer the drained jackfruit 8 minutes to chase off the can, cool, then pull each piece apart along its fibers into ragged shreds — fingers beat knives here. Now squeeze the shreds hard, a fistful at a time, until no more water comes. Dry shreds drink the dressing; wet ones dilute it.
Step 3: Make the dressing
Stir the fish sauce, sugar, lime juice, garlic, and chili with two spoonfuls of the pork broth until the sugar dissolves. It should taste a notch too strong on its own — the jackfruit arrives thirsty and unseasoned, and it will pull the whole bowl back into line.
Step 4: Toss and rest
Toss the jackfruit with the dressing first and let it sit 5 minutes, then fold in the pork, shrimp, and most of the rau răm. The rest matters: jackfruit absorbs slowly, and a salad tossed and served in the same minute tastes of dressing sitting on fiber rather than in it.
Step 5: Top and serve with crackers
Mound the salad, finish with peanuts, fried shallots, and the last of the rau răm, and serve with toasted sesame crackers standing in the bowl. No spoons — you break off a shard of cracker and use it as the scoop, which is half the pleasure and all of the tradition.
Đồ nghề · The tools
Equipment
Mandoline
Bàn bàoĐồ chua lives or dies on evenness — carrot and daikon cut to the same whisper-thin matchstick pickle at the same speed. Use the guard; every Vietnamese grandmother has the scar that says otherwise.
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Questions from the kitchen
Can I use fresh young jackfruit?
If you can get it, yes — boil peeled chunks 25–30 minutes until a skewer slides through, then shred as above. Fair warning: raw young jackfruit bleeds a stubborn latex, so oil your hands and knife before breaking it down. Abroad, canned in brine is what Vietnamese cooks reach for too, without embarrassment.
Why does the jackfruit taste like meat?
Texture, not flavor. Young jackfruit is picked before sugar develops, all neutral fiber that pulls into strands the way slow-cooked pork shoulder does — which is why it carries dressing so convincingly and why this salad is easy to make fully vegetarian: skip the pork and shrimp, use soy sauce for the fish sauce, and add a handful more peanuts for richness.
What do I do if I cannot find bánh tráng mè?
Any plain rice cracker works, and shrimp chips are a cheerful if less traditional scoop. In a true emergency, thick tortilla chips do the structural job. What you want is something rigid, toasty, and slightly bland — the salad brings the seasoning.
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