HizeCool

Bak Kut Teh

May 10th, 2006Under the Sun

Gone. Previous Bak Kut Teh posting gone due to the itchy hand of mine again. I wonder why. But anyway, the Bak Kut Teh is only available in Malaysia and Singapore according to wikipedia

I kinda forgot about what I’ve posted about but I’m sure one of them is about the places that I found to be one of the best Bak Kut Teh. ;p
maybe later…. Sigh*

Just to fill you guys up, here’s the origin of Bak Kut Teh according to foodvenue.

Bak Kut Teh is undoubtedly one of the most popular Malaysian Chinese dish everywhere. Klang is particularly famous for Bak Kut Teh where you can find many shops and hawker stalls selling Bak Kut Teh in its many variations.
If you are a Bak Kut Teh fan, here’s a trivia for you - where do you think is the origin of Bak Kut Teh? Undisputably, most will insist it is a Malaysian dish (perhaps some Singaporeans might differ on this) but where exactly is it from? Some people remarked that it must be from Klang as this is where Bak Kut Teh is most famous. Well, this is partly correct. According to the most plausible version of the story, Bak Kut Teh was invented by a gentleman from Quanzhou of the Fujian province in China. The secret recipe was passed to a friend who later went to Klang and became the first person to commercialise and sell Bak Kut Teh. The dish went on to become a famous dish and was copied and improved many times over. So according to this version the Hokkiens were the inventors of the dish. The Teochews came later and the main visual difference between the Hokkien and Teochew version of Bak Kut Teh is that the Hokkiens use dark soy sauce and thus the soup base is characteristically darker in colour. It is up to the individual’s taste buds which one tastes better.
Bak Kut Teh was originally served in an octagonal bowl of short depth (obviously to keep profit margins high!). Later variations tend to serve the dish in clay pot which we think only serves to keep the heat. Some swears it adds to the taste while others (traditionalists) seem to think it is just another gimmick to provide product differentiation. One thing for sure, the clay pot version usually comes added with extra ingredients like straw mushrooms, lettuce or abalone into the dish. Perhaps the traditionalists are right, it’s just a gimmick for an excuse to charge more.