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5 Secrets to 20 Minute Dinners!
Tips, tricks, and recipes for dinner in a hurry!
Nasi Lemak is the de facto national dish of Malaysia. It’s one of the most popular dishes, consumed and loved by all Malaysians regardless of our ethnicities, race, or origins.
A good nasi lemak recipe is not to be taken lightly; it should be have amazing quality, texture, flavors, and the right ingredients.
Secret Ingredients of Nasi Lemak
Pandan leaves or screwpine leaves in the secret ingredient. The leaves are highly fragrant with floral smell. They are used in many Malaysian recipes.
A nasi lemak will not be authentic without the leaves and coconut milk. The other main ingredient of nasi lemak is sambal. Sambal is the soul of the dish; it brings together all the various toppings and complete the iconic dish.
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Side Dishes for Nasi Lemak
There are a variety of side dishes served on top of the nasi lemak: fried anchovies, fried fish, hard-boiled eggs, cucumber slices, sambal anchovies, sambal udang (shrimp), sambal sotong (squid), beef rendang, chicken rendang or belacan fried chicken.
Assemble the side dishes on top of the rice and served in on top of banana leaf for the best and most authentic nasi lemak. Enjoy!
How Many Calories per Serving?
This recipe is only 338 calories per serving.
Serve Nasi Lemak With:
For a wholesome dinner, make the following dishes.
Nasi Lemak Recipe
Ingredients
- coconut milk steamed rice
- 2 cups rice
- 3 screwpine leaves (tie them into a knot as shown above)
- salt to taste
- 5.6 oz (158g) coconut milk (150 ml-180 ml)
- some water
Tamarind Juice
- 1 cup water
- tamarind pulp (size of a small ping pong ball)
Sambal Ikan Bilis (Dried Anchovies Sambal)
- 1/2 red onion
- 1 cup ikan bilis (dried anchovies)
- 1 clove garlic
- 4 shallots
- 10 dried chillies
- 1 teaspoon belacan (prawn paste)
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon sugar
Other ingredients
- 2 hard boiled eggs, cut into half
- 3 small fish (sardines or smelt fish)
- 1 small cucumber, cut into slices and then quartered
Instructions
- Just like making steamed rice, rinse your rice and drain. Add the coconut milk, a pinch of salt, and some water. Add the pandan leaves into the rice and cook your rice.
- Rinse the dried anchovies and drain the water. Fry the anchovies until they turn light brown and put aside.
- Pound the prawn paste together with shallots, garlic, and deseeded dried chilies with a mortar and pestle. You can also grind them with a food processor. Slice the red onion into rings.
- Soak the tamarind pulp in water for 15 minutes. Squeeze the tamarind constantly to extract the flavor into the water. Drain the pulp and save the tamarind juice.
- Heat some oil in a pan and fry the spice paste until fragrant. Add in the onion rings. Add in the ikan bilis and stir well. Add tamarind juice, salt, and sugar. Simmer on low heat until the gravy thickens. Set aside.
- Clean the small fish, cut them into half and season with salt. Deep fry. Cut the cucumber into slices and then quartered into four small pieces. Dish up the steamed coconut milk rice and pour some sambal ikan bilis on top of the rice. Serve with fried fish, cucumber slices, and hard-boiled eggs.
Hi – do you do soak the deseeded dried chilies in hot water before grinding? If so for how long? I always have problem grinding dried chilies (even if soaked and softened) and getting a fine consistency, because the chili skin tends to be a little hard
How much water for the rice? It just says “some”
Hey! It is amazing! I like cooking in Redmond 4500 multicooker, I think it is much better, but recipe is fantastic! But, maybe there should be another cheese? I try to experiment and find the best one.
5.6ounces of coconut milk is 165ml? Do I then add enough water to make a total of 480ml (2cups)? Same measurement as I cook my normal white rice is 2cups rice and 2cups water. :)
Also million thanks for ur awesome recipes, I am really having fun with them. :)
Hi. I wanted to know what type of dried chili’s is needed for the recipe, I used regular whole Chinese chili’s but it came nothing like the sambal you have pictured, it just mostly purple from the prawn paste TYIA
Dried red chili arbol is what I used.
nasi lemak my all time favourite :D
Hello!!!! If I want to scale up this recipe to 6 cups of rice, should I also scale up the coconut milk to 18oz? Thank you!
Yes I think so.
Nasi Lemak was my childhood breakfast on my way to school in Singapore. i remember paying just one SGD$1 for a packet of banana-leaf wrapped goodies. I do miss those times when I was just discovering the intriguing and intoxicating flavors and smells of our local cusine. I definitely have to make this to try to recapture a little of that sense of wonder.
Hi Bee,
Can you share the brand of dried anchovies you use? I’m in NYC and in the Asian market, I find the variety of brands confusing.
Thanks very much!
C
They are all the same…just choose the ones you like.
Living in a rather off-beat town in Italy, Trieste, with only 2 stores catering for Asian ingredients and the better of the 2 is closing down ai the end of this month….. !!! How I envy all of you who live elsewhere…..
My thanks and compliments to those who made this website possible,for bringing me back all those fond childhood memories of daily food fragrance wafting in the air, as Ah Foon (our amah) struggled to drag us off to the doctor, the dentist whatever….
None of the Peranakan/Nonya food I try to cook here really measures up to what my memory holds… 70 percent of the spices are substitutes… and the remaining 30 percent is genrally stale… Oh, how I envy all of you……
Hey your dishes are specifically an asian and indian style of recipes… I like the way you present the recipe…