Yangon's most addictive street snack: an assortment of pork cuts and offal threaded onto bamboo skewers and simmered in a dark, savory soy broth. Diners pick their own skewers from the bubbling pot and dip them into a punchy garlic-chili sauce.
Once an obscure snack, wet thar dok htoe exploded in popularity across Yangon over the past two decades, until pavement vendors with their steaming cauldrons became a nightly fixture rivaling even mohinga. The dish is nose-to-tail Burmese-Chinese street food at its most thrifty, turning ears, tongue, intestine, and skin into something irresistible. Crouched on plastic stools, friends count their empty skewers to tally the bill.
The broth-soaked morsels are deeply savory with a gentle anise warmth, each cut offering a different texture from springy ear cartilage to silky liver. The raw garlic-chili dip lands hot and sharp, making one skewer impossible to stop at.
Long simmering in a soy-and-spice broth breaks down the collagen-rich offal into tender, gelatinous bites while saturating them with umami. Serving from a constantly warm pot keeps textures supple and lets each skewer absorb more flavor the longer it sits.
Variations
Pork belly skewers, quail egg skewers, tofu and vegetable skewers, intestine-only platter
On the Palate
Where Wet Thar Dok Htoe sits in the Burmese flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 4
How it's made
8 steps · 30 min
- 125 min
Clean and parboil assorted pork offal and cuts (ear, tongue, intestine, skin, liver) until tender.
Watch outParboil the offal until a skewer slides in with no resistance — ear and skin should feel gelatinous, tongue tender; underdone here stays rubbery no matter how long it later steeps.
- 210 min
Thread the cooked pieces onto short bamboo skewers, grouping by type.
- 35 min
Build a broth with soy sauce, water, star anise, ginger, garlic, and a little sugar.
- 45 min
Bring the broth to a gentle simmer and lower the skewers in to keep warm and infuse flavor.
Watch outKeep the broth at a bare shiver, not a rolling boil — a hard boil toughens the offal and clouds the pot; you want it just hot enough to keep infusing.
- 55 min
Pound garlic, dried chili, and a splash of broth into a fiery dipping sauce.
- 62 min
Let diners pick skewers straight from the simmering pot.
- 71 min
Dip each skewer generously in the garlic-chili sauce before eating.
- 82 min
Tally the bill by counting the used bamboo skewers.
