Nasi Lemak
Nasi lemak is rice cooked in coconut milk and pandan, served with a chilli sambal, fried anchovies, roasted peanuts, cucumber and egg. It is sold wrapped in banana leaf from before dawn across Malaysia and Singapore, eaten as breakfast by some and as a late supper by everyone else. The version below is the home-kitchen one: one pot of rice, one pan of sambal, and the accompaniments assembled at the end.
Ingredients
- 400 g jasmine rice
- 400 ml coconut milk
- 200 ml water
- 2 pandan leaves, knotted (or 1 teaspoon pandan extract)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 lemongrass stalk, bruised
- For the sambal: 12 dried red chillies, soaked in hot water
- 6 shallots
- 4 garlic cloves
- 1 tablespoon belacan (shrimp paste), toasted
- 3 tablespoons cooking oil
- 2 tablespoons tamarind paste
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- To serve: 120 g dried anchovies (ikan bilis), fried until crisp
- 100 g raw peanuts, dry-roasted or fried
- 1 cucumber, sliced
- 4 eggs, boiled or fried
- Optional: fried chicken, or sliced fried fish
Method
- Rinse the rice until the water runs clear, then drain. This removes surface starch and keeps the grains separate rather than gluey.
- Put the rice in the pot with the coconut milk, water, salt, pandan and lemongrass. Bring to a bare simmer, then cover and cook on the lowest heat for 15 minutes. Turn off the heat and leave covered for 10 minutes without lifting the lid.
- For the sambal, drain the soaked chillies and blend with the shallots, garlic and toasted belacan into a rough paste. A food processor gives a smoother result; a mortar gives a coarser, more traditional texture.
- Heat the oil in a pan over medium heat and fry the paste for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring, until it darkens and the oil separates. The raw chilli smell should be gone; if it is not, keep frying.
- Add the tamarind paste, sugar and salt, plus 3 tablespoons of water. Simmer for 5 minutes until glossy and thick. Taste: it should be hot first, then sour, then sweet.
- Fry the anchovies in oil for 60 to 90 seconds until crisp, then drain. Warm the peanuts in the same pan if they were prepared earlier.
- Fluff the rice with a fork, discarding the pandan and lemongrass. Spoon onto plates, add a generous spoon of sambal, then arrange anchovies, peanuts, cucumber and egg around it.
Notes and tips
- Buy belacan that smells of roasted shrimp, not ammonia. Toast it in a dry pan for a minute before blending; it deepens the whole sambal.
- The sambal improves after a day in the fridge and keeps for two weeks. Make double and keep a jar.
- If the coconut milk boils hard the rice turns oily and heavy. Keep it at the gentlest possible simmer.
- Dried anchovies come in two sizes. The small, pale ones are for frying whole; the large dark ones are for stock.
- No pandan leaves nearby? A teaspoon of pandan extract stirred into the coconut milk gets most of the way there.
Questions
Is nasi lemak spicy?
The rice is not spicy at all. The heat lives entirely in the sambal, which you add yourself at the table, so a batch can serve both a chilli-shy and a chilli-hungry household.
Can I make it vegetarian?
Yes. Leave out the belacan and anchovies and use fermented soybean paste with a pinch of salt instead of the shrimp paste. The sambal loses some depth but stays sharp and hot.
What rice should I use?
Jasmine, or any long-grain rice. Short-grain rice turns sticky when cooked in coconut milk. Basmati works but tastes less like the original.
How do I keep the peanuts crisp?
Add them at the very last moment, on top of the sambal rather than under it. Moisture from the rice softens them within about twenty minutes.
Cooked it? Tell us how it went on the contact page — corrections and regional variations are always welcome.