Lamprais

Name: Lamprais
Total time: 2 h 30 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Sri Lankan
Ingredients: 400 g Basmati or samba rice; 700 ml Meat stock; 600 g Mixed meat — chicken, beef and lamb; 2 onions, 5 cloves, 4 cm Onion, garlic, ginger; 3 tbsp Roasted curry powder; 4 pods, 4, 1 stick Cardamom, cloves, cinnamon; 250 g Minced beef, for frikkadels; 2 Aubergine, sliced; 4 large Banana leaves; 4 tbsp Coconut oil; 2 tsp Salt

Stock-cooked rice, a mixed meat curry, frikkadels, aubergine and sambol wrapped in a banana leaf and baked, so everything steams into one another.

Source

Recipe by Sri Lankan home kitchens · 🏺 Traditional · Everyday Sri Lankan cooking — rice and three or four curries, coconut in nearly all of them, and a chilli level the island is not shy about.

Sri Lankan · Dutch Burgher dish — An ownerless traditional dish, so no cook is credited. The cited article confirms lamprais as a Dutch Burgher dish of Sri Lanka — rice cooked in stock with curry, frikkadels and sambol, wrapped in banana leaf and baked — and records the Dutch origin of the name. Quantities and method here are this book's own; the halal choice to omit pork is ours and is stated in the ingredients.

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Watch it being made · 3 videos

Saturday Bees Grandma Menu Bandi Full

⏱ 150 min🍽 4 servings🔥 780 kcal🇱🇰 Sri Lanka🌶️🌶️

Dairy-free

Steps

Simmer the meats with the whole spices, onion, garlic and ginger for 45 minutes. Lift out the meat and keep the stock.
Shred or dice the meat and cook it into a thick curry with the roasted curry powder and a ladle of the stock.
Cook the rice in the remaining stock with a little coconut oil until just done, then leave it to rest.
Shape the minced beef into small frikkadel balls, season them and fry until browned all over.
Fry the aubergine slices until soft and dark at the edges.
Soften the banana leaves over a flame for a few seconds so they fold without splitting.
💡 Skip this and the leaf cracks along every fold and the parcel leaks in the oven.
Pile rice in the centre of each leaf with the curry, two frikkadels, aubergine and a spoon of sambol beside it. Fold into a sealed parcel.
Bake at 180 °C for 20 minutes and serve in the leaf, opened at the table.

💡 Tips

Lamprais comes from Sri Lanka's Dutch Burgher community — the name is from the Dutch "lomprijst", a lump of rice. It is not a Sinhalese village dish, and saying so is part of the recipe.
It is a project. Cook the meat curry and frikkadels a day ahead and the assembly is 30 minutes.
No banana leaf? Baking parchment works for the oven, but you lose the scent the leaf gives the rice.