What is it?: Bánh Đùi Gà

I was hungry while shopping at the Co-op, and just had to know...

What is it?

Imagine it with little googly eyes on top and you have what,
in my mind, a bready Dune sandworm vomiting pork should look like.
And maybe a tiny little Paul Atreides on it's back, riding to victory.

If it looks like a duck:
The item looks like a dinner roll that has been slathered in orange syrup and is vomiting some kind of ground meat out of one end (It's probably pork, everything is pork here). It's about 5 inches long and about as round (on the vomiting end) as a tennis ball. The other end tapers a little bit, and there's something like maybe cilantro on it. It's a bit like what I would imagine a Dune Sandworm grub would look like, if it was adorable, made of bread, and people didn't drown them for their water of life.

And it costs as much as a duck:
This item costs 7,000 VND/ $0.33 USD.

And it feels like a duck:
The item feels like a dinner roll, except it's covered in something orange and sticky. Tastes like... Thai chili sauce?

And it smells like a duck:
The item smells like it wants me to eat it RIGHT NOW. (I shouldn't have bought this when I was so hungry, perhaps!) It just smells like a sandwich - slightly sweet and savory. Nothing special, except it was probably baked this morning.

And it tastes like a duck:
WOW. Ok, this is great. It IS basically a sandwich-y dinner roll. It's some kind of very sweet bread, soft and fluffy, stuffed with ground beef or pork and what looks like cubed lengths of seasoned pork or chicken. It's very good. I have almost no fear that there are vegetables lurking in here. Almost. I still don't really know what that thing on top is. Cilantro?

To my infinite sadness, either tradition or apathy has dictated that the meat stops halfway through, leaving the tapered end of the bun basically just... a bun (but orange and sticky, of course). I could see myself making something like this, since we all know I love stuffing foods inside of other foods, in the classic FrankenFood manner. At this point I'm convinced that the orange topping is sweet chile sauce of some kind.

TO THE GOOGLE LAB!

Then it must be: Bánh Đùi Gà, or Chicken Thigh Cake!

Well, this is unexpected: I haven't been able to find a straight up recipe for this, even in the vietnamese sites. No history, either! Well, I'll have to make do with what I find. Google presents me with many different pictures but no direct recipes, and only a few look like what I just ate. I was convinced it was pork (there's pork EVERYWHERE here) and it might still be but just shaped like a chicken thigh. Either seems probable to me.

This video is good, but not in English:

Even though they shape theirs differently (and more in keeping with the traditional name) it's the same thing (or so the internet seems to indicate).

Upon observation, the recipe for this looks like it basically comes down to:

1. Make a sweet bread dough, full of butter.
2. Stuff it with meatsticks or ground meat, maybe some cheese. Veggies if you want, you heathen.
3. Bake on squares of parchment paper or two regular sized muffin papers.
4. Brush with sweet chili sauce and garnish as desired (Cilantro? Parsley??).

Would I buy and eat this again on purpose?
Yes. I might even try to make it. It looks really easy. Guessing the recipe shouldn't be too hard, and cobbling it all together might even be the easiest part.

Rating:
5/5. Holy god. I could eat more than one of these in a sitting, they're so good.