In the early days of October, the people of Me Tri nuggets village (Hanoi) are busy day and night producing nuggets to supply to the market, earning 1-3 million VND per day.

Me Tri com village (Nam Tu Liem district, Hanoi) has existed for a long time and still retains the secret of making the unique aroma of green rice that no other place has. Each year, Me Tri com village has 2 crops, the harvest season and the rice crop. Which, the crop is when the weather is in autumn, from the full moon of the 7th lunar month to the end of September of the lunar calendar.

Many families in Me Tri still keep their father’s traditional profession of making nuggets, the only difference is that the work of making nuggets is now replaced by machines, from threshing to roasting, pounding, sieving, not entirely by hand as before. .

To make fragrant sticky rice, the people here have to get up very early to choose rice. Mr. Toan (40 years old) with more than 20 years of experience said: “There are many types of sticky rice that can be made into nuggets such as luong phoenix sticky rice, fragrant sticky rice, tangerine sticky rice, yellow flower sticky rice, ta sticky rice. produce soft, fragrant, greasy nuggets, when you start working, you have to choose good rice. Currently, the village’s rice is still small, so sticky rice is purchased from all provinces such as Bac Ninh, Phu Tho , Vinh Phuc …”.

“Roasting the nuggets must use wood, not charcoal, so the nuggets will smell. At the beginning of the roasting, the fire must be high, when the com is rare, the fire must be reduced, because if the fire is too big, it will be burned, and the fire is too small. The nuggets won’t meet the plastic requirements. Each batch of roasting lasts for more than 2 hours, “said Toan.

The batches of roasted nuggets are thoroughly checked for ripeness. To check the maturity of the nuggets, the maker puts the rice grains on a piece of wood and then rubs it with his fingers to check the peeling.

After roasting, the nuggets will be peeled and then pounded immediately, not allowed to cool.

The pounding stage requires both thin and loose nuggets, the nuggets remain the same. “During the pounding, you have to always stir it by hand to get the nuggets that are still whole, delicious and green. Depending on the youngness of the rice, on average, pound and sieve it from 5 to 7 times to make it into nuggets and clean the shell. In the past, people used to do it manually, but now there are many machines to support it, so it’s not as hard as before and the nuggets are even and better…”, Mr. Nam said.

Com is sold on the market for between 150,000 and 180,000 VND/kg. “In the biggest rice crop of the year, we have to always work day and night to do it, but there are days when we can’t make it in time to sell. Every day, the establishment brings a lot of nuggets to the market, making a profit of about 1 percent. -3 million per day”, Ms. Ha (on the left, Ha Nam nuggets factory in Me Tri village) excitedly shared.

Fresh nuggets wrapped in lotus leaves, then put in the freezer, when eating, it only takes about 30-40 minutes to taste delicious as usual.

Some people in Me Tri’s Com village said that despite the increasing urbanization process, they still try to keep the traditional craft of making rice with the desire to transmit the cultural quintessence of the Vietnamese people.

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