Nasi Lemak Recipe

4.56 from 95 votes

Nasi Lemak – This iconic Malaysian dish is all about that fragrant coconut milk rice, topped with crispy anchovies, spicy sambal, hard-boiled eggs, roasted peanuts, and fresh cucumber. It’s the most authentic and delicious nasi lemak recipe you’ll ever try!

Prep Time30

Cook Time30

Total Time1

Course: Rice

Cuisine: Malaysian Recipes

Keyword: Nasi Lemak

Servings: people

Author: Bee Yinn Low

Ingredients

Coconut Milk Steamed Rice

2 cups rice
1 ½ cups water cut down to 1 1⁄4 cups if using ¾ cup coconut milk
½ cup coconut milk use ¾ cup for creamier rice
1 teaspoon salt
3 pandan leaves tie them into a knot

Spice Paste

4 shallots peeled
1 clove garlic peeled
8 medium length dried red chilies seeded
1 teaspoon belacan prawn paste

Tamarind Water

1 cup water
tamarind pulp size of a small ping pong ball
salt to taste
2 tablespoons sugar or more to taste

Fried Anchovies

1 cup ikan bilis dried anchovies, peeled
2 cups oil for frying
1 red onion peeled, sliced into rings

Other ingredients

3 small fish sardines or mackerel, cut into halves
2 hard boiled eggs cut into halves
1 cup roasted peanuts
1 small cucumber cut into slices and then quartered

Instructions

Coconut Rice. Rinse the rice with running tap water, repeating the process a few times until the water turns clear. Drain the water completely. Add 1 ½ cups of water to the washed rice, followed by the coconut milk and a pinch of salt. Add the pandan leaves into the rice and cook your rice. Discard the pandan leaves after rice is cooked.
Spice Paste. Pound the shallots, garlic, dried chilies, and prawn paste with a mortar and pestle. Alternatively, you can grind them with a food processor.
Tamarind Water. Soak the tamarind pulp in water for 15 minutes. Constantly squeeze the tamarind to extract its flavor into the water. Drain the pulp and save the tamarind juice.
Fried Anchovies. Rinse the dried anchovies with tap water a few times and let them drain. Heat 2 cups of oil in a pan, fry the anchovies until they've become light brown and crispy. Remove from oil with a strainer and drain on a paper towel-lined plate. You can serve them as is, or add them into sambal to make sambal anchovies.
Sambal Ikan Bilis (Sambal Anchovies). On medium to low heat, heat 2 tablespoons of frying oil in a pan. Stir-fry the spice paste until fragrant, turning reddish in color. Add the onion rings and fried anchovies, stirring well. Pour in the tamarind juice, salt, and sugar. Simmer on low heat until the sauce thickens. Set it aside.
Fried Fish. Clean the small fish and season them with salt. Deep fry with the remaining frying oil.
Assembling Nasi Lemak. To serve, scope out a small bowl of rice and place onto the center of a plate. Arrange the fried fish, hard boiled egg, roasted peanuts, and cucumber around the rice. Add 2 spoons of the sambal on top of the rice. Serve immediately.

Notes

I used a rice cooker to make the coconut milk steamed rice. Caution: Note that some high-tech rice cookers do not allow oily contents in the rice bowl, and the rice cooker might break if coconut milk is added to the rice.
You can increase the coconut milk in the steamed rice to 3/4 cup. If so, reduce the water to 1 1/4 cup. The total water you need to cook the rice is 2 cups.
In Malaysia, you can find roasted peanuts with skin at supermarkets. If you are outside of Malaysia, you may use salted roasted peanuts, such as Planters brand salted peanuts.
You may serve your nasi lemak with the fried anchovies and sambal separately. In this case, just cook the sambal with the onion rings.
Traditionally, nasi lemak is wrapped with banana leaf and shaped into a triangular cone. At home, you may serve it on a sheet of cut banana leaf. Make sure the rice is placed atop the banana leaf. The warmth of the steamed rice allows the banana leaf to impart its earthy aroma to the rice, making the nasi lemak even more scrumptious. If you are outside of Malaysia, you can find frozen banana leaves in Asian stores, in the frozen food section.

Nutrition