These crispy fried shallots recipes include everything from a Cambodian congee topped with garnishes, Shan tomato salad and Massaman curry fried rice to a Burmese potato salad and Thai tea ice cream. All benefit from the fantastic crunchy texture and flavour of crispy fried shallots – and the shallots don’t have to be made fresh, which can be tricky; you can easily use store-bought fried shallots.
Our crispy fried shallots recipes will make you everything from a comforting Cambodian rice porridge topped topped with myriad garnishes, including crunchy fried shallots, and fresh savoury Shan salads from Myanmar to my Massaman curry fried rice, Thai tea ice cream, and a French onion dip from scratch.
All of these wonderful dishes benefit from the fantastic sweet-savoury flavours and crunchy texture of crispy fried shallots. A condiment that’s sprinkled over rice porridges, fried rice dishes and salads in Southeast Asia, crispy fried shallots are a pantry essential.
While you can make your own fried shallots (we’ll share a recipe and tips next week), market-fresh shallots made by the experts are the best. We buy crunchy fried shallots in big jars from Psar Leu market in Siem Reap and they are the freshest, crunchiest, crispiest fried shallots we’ve ever tried.
You can also buy store-bought crispy fried shallots in good supermarkets that stock Asian products (ie. any supermarket in Australia), specialised Asian supermarkets and shops (make a beeline for your nearest Chinatown, or you can buy crispy fried shallots.
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Crispy Fried Shallots Recipes from Cambodian Congee and Shan Salads to Thai Style Fried Rice
Our best crispy fried shallots recipes.
Turmeric Rice Porridge Recipe with Fried Eggs, Chilli Oil, Crunchy Fried Shallots and Herbs
My gently spiced turmeric rice porridge recipe with fried eggs in homemade chilli oil makes comforting bowls of Southeast Asian inspired congee and it’s one of my favourite crispy fried shallots recipes.
Published as part of our Weekend Eggs series, it brims with flavour and texture, courtesy of fresh aromatic herbs such as coriander and dill, zingy spring onions, crunchy pan-roasted peanuts, sliced green chillies, chilli flakes, and those crunchy fried shallots.
As regular readers know from my Make Rice Not War project, I’m a rice-lover and a fan of rice porridges or congees, as our many rice recipes attest. We’ve got everything from recipes for Cambodian chicken rice porridge, rice soup with pork meatballs and vegetable congee to Christine Manfield’s pork and crab congee with XO sauce, and my East-West experiment, bacon and eggs breakfast congee recipe.
So naturally, when we have leftover rice, I’m concocting new rice porridge recipes while Terence is experimenting with fried rice recipes. A tip: use this adorable mini fry pan to do the eggs and fry one egg at a time for perfect round fried eggs.
Turmeric Rice Porridge Recipe with Fried Eggs and Chilli Oil, Crunchy Shallots and Herbs
Massaman Curry Fried Rice Recipe for Fried Rice with Crispy Fried Shallots, Crunchy Potatoes and Pan-Roasted Peanuts
Savoury rice with crunchy fried potatoes, crispy fried shallots, pan-roasted peanuts, and the perfume of dried spices such as cumin, cardamom, cinnamon, and nutmeg, my Massaman curry fried rice recipe makes the perfect bowl of comfort food. It’s one of my favourite crispy fried shallots recipes.
Full of flavour, filling, and energy-giving – with rice and potatoes, it’s loaded with carbs – it would also fix a hangover or be perfect for fuelling up before exercise. While it sounds heavy, fresh coriander to lighten things up.
I created this Massaman curry fried rice recipe to use up leftover steamed rice and Massaman beef curry curry leftovers we had in the fridge from the previous night, but I would make the curry just so I could fry up this dish the day after.
If you did want to make it from scratch, do the rice the day before, and make it in a rice cooker then stir-fry the rice in a carbon steel wok.
Shan Tomato Salad Recipe with Crispy Fried Shallots, Sesame and Coriander
This Shan tomato salad recipe makes a sweet tomato salad textured with zingy purple onions, sesame seeds, crunchy fried shallots and fried garlic, and fragrant fresh coriander. It’s another one of my favourite crispy fried shallots recipes.
Hailing from beautiful Shan State in northeastern Myanmar – a fertile region of forested mountains, rolling hills and serene lakes – this delicious Shan salad is mostly made with crunchy green tomatoes, although we’ve also eaten it with red tomatoes in Myanmar. It’s terrific with either – or both.
Shan cuisine, like many of Myanmar’s cuisines, is distinguished by its fantastic salads. Over the years we’ve heard travellers praise the salads but complain about Myanmar’s oily curries, not realising the salads are meant as accompaniments to those curries, to provide a refreshing contrast.
A tip: pour your dressing on first, then sprinkle on the garnishes, otherwise your crispy fried shallots and crispy fried garlic will go soggy.
Shan Tomato Salad Recipe with Shallots, Sesame and Coriander from Shan State, Myanmar
Comforting Cambodian Rice Soup Recipe with Pork Meatballs for Borbor Sor
This comforting Cambodian rice soup recipe with pork meatballs cooked in the congee is made with leftover steamed rice. Called ‘borbor sor’ or ‘white rice porridge’ in Khmer, it’s one of several ways to make Cambodian congee.
‘White’ used here distinguishes it from rice porridges and rice soups made from Cambodia’s kroeung herb and spice paste or stock and uncooked rice. The beauty of this is that you can customise your Cambodian rice soup recipe to your heart’s content.
If you’re serving this to your family or guests for a weekend breakfast or comforting evening meal, make sure to provide plenty of condiments. Fish sauce is a must. Thai Megachef is our preference but American readers tend to prefer the American-Vietnamese Red Boat Fish Sauce.
We also love chilli oil and homemade Sriracha – and lots of garnishes, including fresh fragrant herbs, spring onions or scallions, lime quarters and chillies. There are just a couple of ingredients that need a pound and we recommend doing that in a mortar and pestle as it releases the flavours and aromas so wonderfully.
Comforting Cambodian Rice Soup Recipe with Pork Meatballs for Borbor Sor Using Leftover Rice
Shan Vermicelli Salad Recipe with Sesame, Coriander, Peanuts and Crispy Fried Shallots
This Shan vermicelli salad recipe with sesame, coriander, peanuts, and crispy fried shallots makes a deliciously light vegetarian noodle salad from Shan State in northeastern Myanmar, but you’ll spot variations of this dry noodle dish in markets and on menus around the country.
The many cuisines of Myanmar – Shan cuisine, Burmese cuisine, Rakhine cuisine, Kachin cuisine, Karen cuisine, and so on – boast an infinite array of salads, which are healthy, refreshing and light yet filling.
Discovering them all is one of the many delights of a food-focused trip to Myanmar. Typically eaten as a contrasting accompaniment to rich oily curries it could also be eaten as a satisfying single-bowl meal.
Before I add the peanuts, crispy fried shallots and crispy fried garlic to this Shan vermicelli salad, I keep some aside to use as garnish, along with some fresh coriander leaves and lime quarters. An additional squeeze of lime just before eating adds some zing.
Shan Vermicelli Salad Recipe with Coriander, Sesame and Peanuts from Shan State
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, crispy fried shallots, and fragrant mint. A kick of heat from the mild green chillies, a little sweetness and sourness from the tamarind, crunch from the crispy fried shallots, and the perfume of fresh mint make this one of the best Burmese salads to accompany your curries.
This recipe makes another one of the best Burmese salads, which along with Shan salads, are simply the best salads in the world as far as we’re concerned, as well as one of my favourite crispy fried shallots recipes.
I adapted this potato salad from my favourite Burmese cookbook, Mi Mi Khaing’s Cook and Entertain the Burmese Way, published in 1978, which I bought in a dusty, dimly-lit bookshop in Yangon years ago.
Mi Mi Khiang recommends ‘cooked oil’ in her salad recipes (just heat it up in a small pan or wok), and uses sesame oil or peanut oil, but vegetable oil or olive oil will also work. If you’ve got a picnic or barbecue planned this weekend, consider this Burmese potato salad – along with some of our other 85 picnic food ideas.
Burmese Potato Salad Recipe With Tamarind, Chilli, Fried Onion and Fragrant Mint
Homemade French Onion Dip Recipe for a Rich Caramelised Onion Dip from Scratch
Make this homemade French onion dip recipe for a rich, creamy caramelised onion dip that will take you back in time to the dips you helped your mum make for backyard barbecues by stirring French onion soup mix into cream cheese or sour cream.
This onion dip recipe makes an even more delicious dip and is worth the little extra effort. I use our carbon steel wok for the onions, as it heats up faster and retains heat better than a fry pan, which means your onions will caramelise faster.
While we think of low, slow cooking when it comes to caramelising onions – and that’s how you should do your onions for a proper French onion soup – for this French onion dip you can speed up the process and still get a great caramelised taste and golden-brown colour by shifting the heat between medium and high.
Keep a close eye on the onions so they brown but don’t burn. When on medium, let the onions sit and sizzle in the oil. Then turn the heat up high and use a wooden spoon or spatula to stir-fry the onions, turning the heat down again to let them sit and sizzle.
When the onions are just about done, add the sea salt, white pepper, garlic powder, ground paprika and ground star anise, stir well to combine over low heat for another minute or two, then turn off the heat and transfer the onions to a cold dish to allow them to cool, then refrigerate until needed. Garnish with a sprinkle of crispy fried shallots just before serving.
Thai Tea Ice Cream Recipe and an Easy No Churn Ice Cream Recipe for Any Flavour
This Thai tea ice cream recipe makes the easiest no churn ice cream that you’ll ever make using just four ingredients: Thai tea mix, whipping cream, condensed milk, and salt. The flavour will take you right back to Thailand, but you can really use any flavour with this easy no churn ice cream recipe.
If you’ve been to Thailand and you tried the bright orange Thai iced tea at a coffee shop or local restaurant and you loved it, then you are going to love this Thai tea ice cream. If you tasted the soft serve Thai tea ice cream at Bangkok’s Chatuchak market and enjoyed that, then you’re going to adore this rich creamy ice cream.
And if you’re not a fan of Thai tea, then you can really add any anything to our easy no churn ice cream recipe below, from vanilla to chocolate chips, ground peanuts to crushed biscuits.
We include a little salt in our Thai tea ice cream recipe, as it’s very rich and very sweet without it, so the salt provides balance, and I top it with pounded crispy fried shallots to add crunch and savouriness.
Thai Tea Ice Cream Recipe and an Easy No Churn Ice Cream Recipe for Any Flavour
Please do let us know if you make any of our crispy fried shallots recipes in the comments below as we’d love to know how they turn out for you.
