Our best Burmese recipes and Shan recipes from Myanmar include creamy coconut noodle soups, spicy fried chicken, incredibly rich and hearty curries, aromatic coconut rice, and an array of crunchy salads fragrant with fresh herbs. The refreshing salads accompany the curries, providing texture, contrast and a balance of flavours, while the rice soaks up the richly-spiced and oily curries.
If you’re a lover of richly spiced curries and refreshing salads perfumed with fragrant fresh herbs and you’re not familiar with the food of Myanmar, then please browse this round-up of our best Burmese recipes and Shan recipes, some of our favourite dishes from Myanmar, and plan yourself a feast.
We became smitten with the food of Myanmar on our first trip to Yangon some years ago. On a second longer trip, on which we travelled all over the country, we came to realise that there was no single cuisine, but there were many cuisines, we learnt how to eat them, and fell in love with Myanmar’s highly under-rated and often misunderstood food.
Back in Yangon I searched for a Myanmar cookbook in the charmingly cluttered bookshops behind The Strand hotel, where I found the modestly printed and endearingly old-fashioned Burmese cookbook Cook and Entertain the Burmese Way (1978) by Mi Mi Khaing, which quickly became one of my favourite cookbooks.
A delight to read, it’s full of charming insights into the culinary culture as much as the cuisines, and has become all the more precious to me since the brutal military coup d’état of February 2021, because who knows when democracy will be restored and it will be ethical as much as safe to return to beautiful Myanmar.
The many cuisines of Myanmar – Shan cuisine, Burmese cuisine, Rakhine cuisine, Kachin cuisine, Karen cuisine, and so on – are what we call a bit ‘same same but different’ here in Southeast Asia, but one thing they share are an infinite array of salads, which are healthy, refreshing light yet filling. Even if you aren’t a fan of curries, you’ll adore the salads.
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Now let me share my suggestions for our best Burmese recipes and Shan recipes from Myanmar.
Best Burmese Recipes and Shan Recipes from Myanmar from Spicy Curries to Crunchy Salads
Many of our best Burmese recipes and Shan recipes have been adapted from Mi Mi Khaing’s recipes in her delightful cookbook (link above). I’ve tweaked some recipes when I’ve not been able to find ingredients and I thought if I can’t find them here in Cambodia, our readers in North America, Australasia and Europe might struggle to source them, but I do encourage you to buy the book and make the original recipes.
Burmese Coconut Chicken Noodle Soup Recipe for Ohn No Khao Swe
This ohn no khao swe recipe for Myanmar’s Burmese chicken coconut noodle soup tops our list of best Burmese recipes and best Shan recipes from Myanmar and featured on my list of 31 noodle recipes to cook in March for Noodle Month.
One of our best chicken noodle soup recipes and one of the most popular chicken soup recipes on Grantourismo, ohn no khao swe consists of egg noodles in an aromatic chicken soup with a coconut milk base and chicken drumsticks, although you could use chicken breasts if you prefer.
Primarily a breakfast dish, although it can be eaten at any time of day, it’s garnished with crunchy fried noodles, boiled eggs, shallots, fried garlic, dried chilli, lime, coriander (cilantro), and sometimes fried chickpea fritters.
Ohn No Khao Swe Recipe for Burmese Chicken Coconut Noodle Soup
Traditional Burmese Egg Curry Recipe for a Myanmar Breakfast Favourite
Our traditional Burmese egg curry recipe makes a Myanmar curry shop staple that’s typically eaten for breakfast and it’s another of our best Burmese recipes.
Served with a spicy tomato and onion-based curry, the boiled eggs are peeled and deep fried in turmeric until golden, which is why you’ll also see this called a Burmese golden egg curry recipe in Burmese cookbooks.
In some ways this Burmese egg curry is a cousin to Thai son-in-law eggs and the many versions of Chinese tiger skin eggs, however, it’s the unique flavour of this Burmese egg curry that sets this dish apart.
In Myanmar, they prefer duck eggs for their size and larger yolks. We used hen’s eggs for this recipe and we cook them for 5-6 minutes using our boiled egg technique. See our guide to cooking eggs perfectly.
Many Burmese egg curry recipes online leave out two key ingredients – the onions that are lightly caramelised in turmeric oil, a technique used for many Burmese dishes, and curry powder, as some food writers mistakenly believe there is no such thing as curry powder in Burmese cooking. More on that below.
Traditional Burmese Egg Curry Recipe for a Myanmar Breakfast Favourite
Shan Tomato Salad Recipe with Shallots, Sesame and Coriander from Shan State
One of the best Shan Recipes, this Shan tomato salad recipe with shallots, sesame and coriander will make you a sweet tomato salad textured with crunchy purple onions, sesame seeds and crispy fried shallots and garlic, and fragrant fresh coriander.
Hailing from beautiful Shan State in northeastern Myanmar – a fertile region of forested mountains, rolling hills and serene lakes – this delicious Shan tomato salad is mostly made with crunchy green tomatoes, although we’ve also had it with red tomatoes. It’s terrific with either – or both.
Shan cuisine, like many of Myanmar’s cuisines – and all of the northern Southeast Asian cuisines, in fact – is distinguished by its fantastic salads. Over the years I’ve heard travellers praise the salads but complain about Myanmar’s oily curries, not realising that the salads are accompaniments to those curries, providing a refreshing contrast.
We learnt to make this salad on a Shan cooking class held in the humble home of a local cook and her dear elderly mother, not far from the floating vegetable gardens on lovely Inle Lake, where these divine tomatoes are grown. I often wonder how they are, and how the people of Inle are currently managing.
Shan Tomato Salad Recipe with Shallots, Sesame and Coriander from Shan State, Myanmar
Best Burmese Fried Chicken Recipe for a Spicy Street Food Snack from Myanmar
This Burmese fried chicken recipe is another of our best Burmese recipes and one of our best fried chicken recipes. It makes gently spiced fried chicken drumsticks, which are a popular street food snack in Myanmar, sold at roadside stalls to take away or eat at plastic tables set up around the stall.
While Thai style fried chicken may be better known here in Southeast Asia, Myanmar’s fried chicken is easily as delicious, and this Burmese fried chicken recipe will make you the kind of fried chicken that locals love to tuck into on the streets of Yangon and other cities in Myanmar.
One thing that we love about this recipe is that the dredge is a one-step process – there are no egg or breadcrumbs. You place the flour and spices in a plastic bag, add the marinated chicken pieces, and shake the bag to coat. As the coating is thin, keep the temperature at around 175°C (350°F) checking it with a deep fry thermometer.
Locals use a huge wok for deep-frying, but Terence has a deep saucepan just for deep-frying as it’s become well-seasoned. If you deep-fry often it’s worth investing in a dedicated deep fryer. We serve this with chicken with some homemade sweet chilli sauce or homemade Thai Sriracha sauce.
Best Burmese Fried Chicken Recipe for a Spicy Street Food Snack from Myanmar at Home
Burmese Raw Cabbage Salad Recipe and the Secrets to Making the Best Burmese Salads
Another of our best Burmese recipes, this easy Burmese raw cabbage salad recipe makes a refreshing salad that is delightfully crunchy and slightly tangy, the perfect contrast to rich oily Burmese curries. Mostly made with white cabbage, for colour we’ve used purple cabbage or red cabbage, which is incredibly healthy.
This Burmese ‘coleslaw’ should definitely be packed in your picnic basket. It makes a fantastic side salad to a roast chicken for a picnic or the perfect companion to a rich Burmese curry if you’re cooking up a feast of food from Myanmar.
When making this Burmese raw cabbage salad recipe and other Burmese salads, I always keep in mind Mi Mi Khaing’s guidelines to making Burmese salads or “lethoke”, which actually means salads “mixed by hand”. In her cookbook, the section is called “Salads, Which Burmese Mix By Hand”.
Khaing explains how Burmese cooks always use their hands to combine their salads – which you would have seen on the streets of Myanmar (gloved hands!) – but says that this “may of course be done with salad utensils”. Although she insists “it must be thorough, to combine the base ingredient entirely with the other ingredients for balancing of flavor, consistency, colour, and fragrance”.
Burmese Raw Cabbage Salad Recipe and the Secrets to Making the Best Burmese Salads
Burmese Cucumber Salad Recipe with Sesame Seeds, Green Chillies and Crispy Fried Shallots
This Burmese cucumber salad recipe makes a crunchy cucumber salad with sesame seeds, green chillies, purple shallots and crispy fried shallots with a dressing of fruit vinegar and sesame oil, and it’s another of the best Burmese recipes.
I make the dressing in a glass jar with lid, adding the sesame oil, fruit vinegar (I use apple cider vinegar), fresh lime juice, salt, caster sugar, and half the sesame seeds to the jar, screwing the lid on, and giving it a good shake.
Make sure to taste the dressing before adding it to the salad and adjust the seasoning to suit your palate. I then pour the dressing into the mixing bowl with the veggies, combine everything well, taste it again, adjusting the seasoning if needed.
I use a slotted spoon to scoop up the salad and arrange it on a serving plate. I leave any excess dressing in the bowl, as the last thing I want is a soggy salad. I then sprinkle the remaining sesame seeds, crispy fried shallots and fresh coriander on at the last minute and serve the cucumber salad immediately.
Burmese Cucumber Salad Recipe with Sesame Seeds, Green Chillies and Crispy Fried Shallots
Burmese Green Mango Salad Recipe for the Best Southeast Asian Green Mango Salad
Our Burmese green mango salad recipe makes one of Southeast Asia’s best green mango salads and another of the best Burmese recipes. Where the Thai green mango salad is notable for its spiciness, the Cambodian green mango salad for it funkiness, and the Vietnamese green mango salad for its fragrance, the Burmese green mango salad is the most balanced and textured.
In northern Southeast Asia, where green mango salads can be found in every country, with variations both across the region and within provinces, cities, towns, and villages within each country, this Burmese green mango salad recipe makes one of Southeast Asia’s best green mango salads.
Our Burmese green mango salad recipe is based on a combination of a salad we learnt to make in a cooking class in Myanmar and a Burmese green mango salad recipe recipe that I’ve adapted from my favourite Burmese cookbook.
In my post on Mi Mi Khaing’s Burmese raw cabbage salad recipe, I shared her secrets to making salads and a list of ingredients from each category that she encourages cooks to select from in order to create a perfect salad. If you follow her guide you really can’t go wrong.
This Burmese green mango salad is so good and it’s comprised of ingredients from each of Mi Mi Khaing’s categories – fish sauce for saltiness, shrimp paste for a “heavier taste” she considers essential, a sour fruit (green mango), sesame seeds and shrimp powder or ground dried shrimp to counteract moistness (and provide texture), oil for ‘blending’ (or combining) flavours, and the green chillies, shallots, crispy fried onions, and fresh mint for fragrance, colour and finish.
Burmese Green Mango Salad Recipe for the Best Southeast Asian Green Mango Salad
Burmese Curry Powder Recipe for an Easy Homemade Spice Blend for Burmese Curries
This easy homemade Burmese curry powder recipe makes an essential ingredient in Burmese curries and it’s another of the best Burmese recipes. It’s a particularly peppery spice blend, which is a typical Burmese curry powder mix for meat and fish curries, according to cookbook author Mi Mi Khaing.
Mi Mi Khaing writes that “…a Burmese housewife without a reliable source of ready-made powder makes her own, roasting, pounding, and sieving the seeds and mixing them in different proportions to suit different needs.”
“Seeds include cardamom, cumin, fenugreek, clove, pepper, coriander, mustard, nutmeg, bay leaf, cinnamon bark, and a few others,” she tells us before sharing her own homemade Burmese curry powder recipe below.
Burmese curries are distinguished by their dried spices and seeds, which should first be pan-roasted in a dry non-stick pan or cast-iron pan for a few minutes or so to release their aromatic oils. You then need to allow them to cool before using a mortar and pestle – or even a spice grinder or coffee grinder – to grind the seeds to a powder.
You can combine the freshly ground spices and pre-ground spices in the mortar or put the freshly ground spices through a fine mesh sieve or dedicated spice strainer and transfer them to a large clean bowl to combine. Use a stainless steel spice funnel to transfer your spice mix into an air-tight jar or container for storage in a dark place in your pantry.
Burmese Curry Powder Recipe for an Easy Homemade Spice Blend for Burmese Curries
Classic Burmese Chicken Curry Recipe for an Aromatic Tomato Based Curry
This classic Burmese chicken curry recipe makes a fragrant, gently spiced curry that’s perfumed with turmeric, ginger, garlic, chilli, and lemongrass, and it’s easily another of our best Burmese recipes.
A rich curry with a moreish tomato-based gravy and a layer of aromatic oil that’s quickly soaked up by coconut rice, it should be served with zingy salads and a relish or two.
This is another of Mi Mi Khaing’s recipes that I’ve tweaked. As delicious as they are, her curry recipes often result in more gentle versions of the curries we’ve eaten in Myanmar, which we recall being punchier in flavour, which is perhaps a result of changing tastes.
I’ve tried to strike a balance between the intended flavour of her recipes and the dishes we’ve eaten on our travels in Myanmar. I make this curry in a big round bottomed wok or a Dutch oven.
We serve it with the Burmese coconut rice (recipe below), a relish or two (I haven’t shared those recipes yet but will in the future, so do bookmark this page if they interest), and refreshing salads, such as the Shan tomato salad and Burmese raw cabbage salad.
Classic Burmese Chicken Curry Recipe for an Aromatic Tomato Based Curry
Shan Vermicelli Salad Recipe from Shan State, Myanmar
This Shan vermicelli salad recipe is another of our best Shan recipes. It makes a deliciously light vegetarian vermicelli noodle salad with sesame, coriander and peanuts from Shan State in northeastern Myanmar, but you’ll spot variations of this dry noodle dish in markets and on menus around the country.
Typically eaten as a contrasting accompaniment to rich oily curries it could also be eaten as a satisfying single-bowl meal. It makes one of countless delicious salads and dry noodle dishes that distinguish the food of Shan State and Myanmar more generally.
The Shan people love their noodles and Shan State is fairly close to heaven for noodle lovers with an array of noodle dishes made with every type of noodle, from spaghetti-like round noodles and flat wide noodles to fresh round rice noodles and dried bean-thread vermicelli or glass noodles.
We’d eaten variations of this cold Shan noodle salad everywhere from simple eateries and market stalls in Shan State (best known to travellers as the home of Inle Lake) to Yangon, the Myanmar capital, where we’d tried similar salads at a popular Shan eatery and a ‘salad buffet night’ of all things at the historic Governor’s Residence hotel, where we were lucky to stay on the guidebook research trip.
Which is to explain how we found ourselves at a fancy hotel buffet, sampling countless salads from right across Myanmar. The salads of Myanmar can be as simple as they can be complex, with crunchy raw vegetable salads made with as few as four or five ingredients to more complex rice and noodle salads with a long list of ingredients, including several types of noodles.
Shan Vermicelli Salad Recipe with Coriander, Sesame and Peanuts from Shan State
Burmese Indian Style Chicken Curry Recipe
This Burmese Indian style chicken curry recipe makes another one of the best Burmese recipes, a rich curry fragrant with ginger, turmeric, garlic and chilli that has the homemade Burmese curry powder, above, on its concise list of ingredients.
It’s the perfect accompaniment to Burmese coconut rice and the many refreshing salads of Myanmar that provide contrasting textures and flavours, such as the Burmese raw cabbage salad, Shan vermicelli noodle salad and Shan tomato salad recipe.
Burmese curries are distinguished by their dried spices and seeds, which should first be pan-roasted in a dry non-stick pan or cast-iron pan to release their aromatic oils. After they cool, use a mortar and pestle – or even a spice grinder or coffee grinder – to grind the seeds to a powder.
Put the freshly ground spices through a fine mesh sieve or dedicated spice strainer and use a stainless steel spice funnel to transfer your spice mix into an air-tight jar or container for storage in a dark place in your pantry.
Burmese Indian Style Chicken Curry Recipe for a Rich Curry Fragrant with Ginger, Turmeric and Garlic
Burmese Coconut Rice Recipe – A Traditional Recipe Adapted for the Modern Rice Cooker
This easy Burmese coconut rice recipe makes another of the best Burmese recipes, a deliciously addictive turmeric-tinted rice, made with coconut milk and scented with cinnamon and cloves, that’s made for rich Burmese curries.
I adapted this coconut rice recipe from a traditional Burmese recipe in Mi Mi Khaing’s cookbook, which calls for cooking over embers, but also indicates an electric rice cooker is suitable.
In brackets after the title of this Burmese coconut rice recipe it actually says “suitable for electric rice cookers”. At the end of step 2 she advises that this recipe can be made in a rice cooker by omitting step 5, which calls for placing the rice pot “over embers only and put red-hot coals over lid”. Good idea!
As we can’t cook on the traditional clay brazier that we had on the balcony at our last apartment, we love this recipe. If you’re a fan of this style of fragrant rice dish, then you’re going to adore this easy coconut rice.
While it might lack the smoky aromas you’d get from cooking the rice over fire, it still has plenty of perfume and flavour from the coconut milk, cloves, cinnamon, and bay leaves.
We have a very basic old-fashioned rice cooker here in Cambodia, where we’ve never had access to many fancy kitchen brands, but one day we’d love something like this industrial-looking, stainless steel, Cuisinart rice cooker or this more contemporary curvy Cuckoo rice cooker.
Burmese Coconut Rice Recipe – A Traditional Recipe Adapted for the Modern Rice Cooker
Burmese Potato Salad Recipe With Tamarind, Chilli, Fried Onion and Fragrant Mint
This Burmese potato salad recipe makes a light potato salad with tamarind, chilli, fried onion, and fragrant mint, and it’s another of our best Burmese recipes. It’s a potato salad recipe that makes a light mayonnaise-free potato salad that will even satisfy potato salad lovers raised on mayonnaise.
The simple tamarind-based sweet-sour salad dressing, the crunchy raw onions, fresh fragrant mint, kick of chilli, and crispy fried shallots give this potato salad enough flavour and texture that you won’t miss the creamy mayo one bit.
Mi Mi Khiang recommends ‘cooked oil’ in her potato salad recipes (just heat it up in a small pan or wok), and she uses sesame oil or peanut oil, which are common in the cooking of Myanmar. But by all means, use another oil, if you prefer.
You can make your own crunchy fried onions or you can buy Southeast Asian-style fried shallots (most brands available outside the region are Thai) and if you don’t find them at your supermarket, try an Asian supermarket or market.
One tricky ingredient for readers from cooler climates is tamarind. We can get fresh tamarind pulp (the seeds and flesh of the tamarind) but outside Southeast Asia any decent Asian supermarket will have tamarind concentrate which you can mix with water to achieve the right consistency.
Burmese Potato Salad Recipe With Tamarind, Chilli, Fried Onion and Fragrant Mint
Please do let us know if you make any of our best Burmese recipes and Shan recipes as we’d love to hear how they turn out for you.
