Spicy Pork Lettuce Cups

I think this recipe has potential. I omitted the chile because I don't like spicy food and used ground turkey because ground pork wasn't available. I felt like these were missing a sauce. If I were to make them again I would wrap it in fresh roll wrappers and serve peanut sauce with them. 

I misread the recipe and made it with pork SAUSAGE. But it turned out great! I added extra lime juice and served with my CSA Savoy cabbage as the "roll". My daughter sneaked in tater tots as a side dish-never turned away at our table. Nothing was watery and I omitted the sugar.

We don't like cucumber in our house, so I used zucchini, instead. Also, since we are in a transition stage to eating healthier and are getting used to lots o' veggies in the main dishes, I decided to saute them along with the pork so it would be a bit more palatable to the kids. Of course, there was quite a bit of water in the pan, so I mixed a bit of cornstarch & cold water and mixed in to the hot liquid to thicken it into a sauce. Blended well with the recipe's fish sauce mixture, too. I had leftover mushy homemade yellow rice from two nights ago (which I overcooked), so sprinkled w/tablespoon of flour, mashed into patties and fried in some olive oil. Family loved it. It's going in the recipe book!

Family loved it. I kept all toppings in a separate container so everyone could pick and choose.

My family loved this. I followed the recipe exact and still won't make any future adjustments. The sauce does taste a bit sour but once added to the pork mixture it balances out perfectly. I tossed everything together just before serving so my cucumbers didn't have a chance to release their water, which happens as a result of coming in contact with salt. A great weekday recipe for sure. I had some leftover rice in the fridge so I made a quick fried rice dish using eggs and green onions. Was delicious!

Yummy! I agree it was a bit messy, but the flavors were wonderful! Sugar was just right. It would be good as a vegetarian dish also.

I'm not sure where the "watery" element the two previous reviewers mentioned is coming. I can think of a lot of descriptive words for this dish, including crunchy, fresh, tasty, etc... but there was nothing watery about it. All I can think is that they didn't seed the cucumber like the recipe called for? I used an English cucumber and seeded it, and had no issue with it being watery. I also wouldn't recommend any additional sugar; just use the juice from one lime, mixed with the fish sauce and the tsp of sugar. If you just drank it I imagine it would be too sour, but you'll see that it's a very small amount of liquid that will be incorporated into a very large bowl of meat and veggies. I think the ratios are just about perfect as is. Good, solid weeknight recipe. Prep everything first, because the actual cooking/combining goes by very quickly.

I used ground chicken in this recipe and omitted the serrano for my kids. So it wasn't spicy, but we still really loved it. It was fresh and tasty. It was really messy and watery, but I just kept on eating and using my napkin :) I could see how a bit more sugar like another reviewer posted would be good, but I didn't think it was too sour.

This recipe has a lot of potential, with a few adjustments. First, we tripled the amount of sugar -- the sauce was wince-inducingly sour otherwise. Second, next time we will hold back on adding the cucumbers to the mixture and save them as a topping to add at the table -- they lost a lot of water, which in turn watered down the flavor of the sauce and also made eating the lettuce cups extremely messy. Nonetheless, this was a really easy and quick recipe with good flavor; we definitely plan to make it again. We loved how it integrated Vietnamese flavors with so many fresh vegetables. Plus, my 4-year-old and 2-year-old loved it (we excluded the serrano for them)!