Best Burmese Recipes to Try at Home

These are all the Burmese recipes on Burmawala Kitchen, cooked in Aamna’s kitchen in Hackney. They’re grouped by type, and every card takes you straight to the full recipe.

Start here

New to Burmese food? Begin with these three.

• Mohinga is Burma’s national dish, and tinned fish makes it easy to cook in the UK.
• Lahpet is the tea leaf salad that shows you what Burmese crunch is all about.
• Ohn no khao swe is a coconut chicken noodle soup that everyone finishes at the table.

Noodles and noodle soups

Mohinga is a fish and lemongrass soup poured over rice noodles. Ohn no khao swe is a creamy coconut chicken noodle soup thickened with chickpea flour. Mont di is a big bowl of noodles tossed with slow cooked beef, soy sauce, tamarind and crunchy toppings, enough for about 15 people.

Salads and street snacks

Burmese salads are called thoke. Lahpet mixes pickled tea leaves with fried beans, peanuts and garlic. Thami letto mixes rice and noodles with tamarind, fish sauce, roasted gram flour and crispy onions. Buu thee kyaw are marrow fritters in a crisp, spiced gram flour batter.

Curries

Amè hnat is marinated beef cooked slowly until meltingly tender. The fish curry simmers coley in an onion and tomato sauce and comes with rice cooked in butter and whole spices. The pumpkin curry is sweetened with jaggery and finished with a tadka of whole spices, curry leaves and dried chillies.

Indo-Burmese favourites

Dishes from Aamna’s Burmese-Indian home cooking: mutton chops simmered in spices then fried in egg until crisp, small square parathas stuffed with spiced keema, and chicken noodles in a coconut milk and tom yum sauce.

Sweets

Kaala halwa is coconut milk and jaggery stirred until dark and glossy. Coconut jelly is set with agar agar and cut into diamonds. The pumpkin semolina cake is Aamna’s autumn take on sanwin makin. For a no bake treat, try her chocolate coconut ice. The Burmese desserts guide has the full picture.

Tips for cooking Burmese food at home

• Toast your flours. For mohinga, toast the gram flour and rice flour separately until they change colour. That is where the nutty flavour comes from.
• Make the toppings part of the meal. Put out fried garlic, crispy onions, lime, coriander and chilli oil so everyone can finish their own bowl.
• Use cooled rice for thami letto. Warm rice turns mushy when you mix everything in.
• Fry in small batches. Crowding the pan cools the oil and makes fritters greasy.
• Take shortcuts. Tinned fish for mohinga, shop bought crispy onions, or a spoonful of Thami Letto over plain rice all work.

Need to stock up first? Read the Burmese ingredients guide.

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