Rice cooked in coconut milk with knotted pandan, served with a sweet-sour chili sambal, fried anchovies and fish, roasted peanuts, boiled egg and cucumber.
Untested: not yet made in this kitchen. It is here for the Rice section’s regional pages and is adapted from the source named in the Notes.
Ingredients
Coconut rice
- 2 cups rice
- 1½ cups water (1¼ cups if using ¾ cup coconut milk)
- ½ cup coconut milk (¾ cup for creamier rice)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3 pandan leaves, tied in a knot
Sambal
- 4 shallots, peeled
- 1 clove garlic, peeled
- 8 medium-length dried red chilies, seeded
- 1 teaspoon belacan (shrimp paste)
- 1 cup water
- 1 piece tamarind pulp, the size of a small ping-pong ball
- 2 tablespoons sugar, or more to taste
Garnishes
- 1 cup ikan bilis (dried anchovies), cleaned
- 2 cups oil, for frying
- 1 red onion, peeled and sliced into rings
- 3 small fish (sardines or mackerel), halved
- 2 hard-boiled eggs, halved
- 1 cup roasted peanuts
- 1 small cucumber, sliced and quartered
- Salt, to taste
Directions
Key ingredients
- Rice. Rinse the rice until the water runs clear and drain. Add the water, coconut milk, salt and knotted pandan, and cook in a rice cooker or pot. Discard the pandan.
- Paste. Pound or blend the shallots, garlic, chilies and belacan to a paste.
- Tamarind. Soak the tamarind in the 1 cup water for 15 minutes, squeeze, and strain.
- Anchovies. Fry the anchovies in the oil until light brown and crisp. Drain, keeping the oil.
- Sambal. Fry the paste in 2 tablespoons of that oil over medium-low heat until fragrant and reddish. Add the onion rings and some of the fried anchovies, then the tamarind juice, salt and sugar, and simmer until thick.
- Fish. Salt the small fish and deep-fry them in the remaining oil.
- Plate a mound of rice with the fish, egg, peanuts, cucumber and remaining anchovies around it, and two spoonfuls of sambal on top.
Notes
Source Adapted from “Nasi Lemak Recipe,” Rasa Malaysia (Bee Yinn Low’s site; read through the Wayback Machine).
A correction to the source Its ingredient list gives 1 teaspoon salt for the rice; its method says “a pinch.” Treat the teaspoon as the maximum. The liquid swap keeps the total at 2 cups for 2 cups of rice either way. It does not say how long to cook the rice.
UNESCO UNESCO’s 2024 listing is of Malaysian breakfast culture, which names nasi lemak; the dish itself is not the inscribed element.
The Rice section’s Southeast Asia page (/rice/southeast-asia/) covers the history and technique behind this dish.