Burmese Food ✦ Beginner's Guide
Burmese food is one of the great unknown cuisines of Asia. Sitting between India, China and Thailand, it has been borrowing and improving for centuries. Here is the honest beginner's guide to understanding it, ordering it and eating it well.
Walk into a Thai restaurant and you mostly know what to expect. Walk into a Chinese restaurant and the menu has familiar shapes. Walk into a Burmese restaurant and you might genuinely have no idea where to start. The dishes look unfamiliar, the spice profile is unlike its neighbours, and the eating customs are different again. This is part of why Burmese food remains so under appreciated outside Burma. It rewards a little prior knowledge.
The good news is that the basics of how Burmese food works are not complicated. Once you understand five things, the cuisine opens up. You will be able to order confidently in restaurants, follow recipes at home, and recognise why a Burmese dish tastes the way it does.
Burmese food sits at a crossroads. It is its own thing, but it borrows freely from India, China and Thailand without becoming any of them. That is part of what makes it brilliant.
The Five Things to Know
The Flavour Profile Is Nutty, Not Hot
If you have eaten Thai food and expected Burmese to be similar, the first surprise is the spice level. Burmese cooking uses warmth rather than heat. Turmeric, paprika and a small amount of mild chilli are the standard spice base. The flavour is rich, savoury and aromatic, but you almost never feel the kind of fierce burn you get from Thai or Sichuan cooking.
The dominant notes are nuttiness from peanuts, sesame and gram flour, deep umami from fish sauce, and a gentle warmth from the spice mix. If you want a deeper look at what makes the cuisine taste the way it does, our guide to the Burmese pantry walks through the seven core ingredients.
Salads Are Not What You Think They Are
The word salad in Burmese cooking does not mean what it means in British or American food. A Burmese salad is not lettuce and dressing. It is a bold, mixed dish of cooked ingredients, fresh herbs, crispy elements, oil and acid, all tossed together and eaten as a main course.
The classic example is Htamin Let Thok, a rice salad made by mixing warm rice with peanuts, sesame, fried onions, fish sauce, lime and spices. There is also Laphet Thoke, the famous fermented tea leaf salad, and Lethok Sone, a mixed bean and chickpea salad. They are bold, complete, satisfying meals.
Noodles and Rice Are Equal Partners
Burmese cuisine treats noodles with the same seriousness as rice. Mohinga, the unofficial national dish, is a rich fish broth poured over rice noodles. Ohn No Khao Swe is a coconut chicken noodle soup that bears similarity to Malaysian laksa. Kao Suey is a yellow curry noodle dish. Mont Di and Nan Gyi Thoke are dry tossed noodle dishes related to the rice salads.
If you want a single dish that demonstrates the breadth of Burmese cooking, Mohinga is the answer. It is what a Burmese cook makes when they want to show off. Most Burmese restaurants in the UK have at least one mohinga style dish on the menu, and it is almost always worth ordering.
The Eating Is Communal
Traditional Burmese eating is shared. A meal is typically several small dishes brought to the table together rather than individual plates. Rice is the centre, and around it sits a curry, a salad, a soup, a vegetable side and condiments. Diners help themselves to what they want, mixing flavours as they go.
This matters when you order. If you are at a Burmese restaurant with three or four people, do not each order a main. Order three or four dishes between you, plus a rice and a soup, and share everything. That is how the food is meant to be eaten, and it is how the cuisine reveals its range.
Condiments Are Built In, Not Added
This is the most important thing to understand. In most Asian cuisines, condiments are something you add at the table. Soy sauce, chilli oil, sriracha. In Burmese cooking, the condiment is often mixed all the way through the dish before serving. The whole point is integration. Every grain of rice, every noodle, carries the flavour.
This is the principle behind Htamin Let Thok and behind Thami Letto. It is what makes Burmese rice and noodle toppers distinct from Chinese chilli crisp and most other oil based condiments. You mix it through. You do not spoon it on top.
Five Burmese Dishes Worth Knowing
If you are going to a Burmese restaurant for the first time, or you want a starter list of what to look for, these five dishes are the foundation of the cuisine.
Mohinga
MohingarThe national dish. A rich, savoury fish broth poured over rice noodles, topped with crunchy fritters, hard boiled egg, herbs and lime. Comforting and complex in equal measure.
Htamin Let Thok
Rice mixed by handThe rice salad that inspired Thami Letto. Warm rice mixed with peanuts, sesame, fried onions and spices. Communal, generous, deeply satisfying.
Laphet Thoke
Tea leaf saladThe most famous Burmese dish abroad. Fermented tea leaves tossed with crunchy nuts, beans, seeds, cabbage, tomato and lime. Earthy, sour, crunchy and entirely unique.
Ohn No Khao Swe
Coconut chicken noodlesA coconut chicken noodle soup similar in spirit to Malaysian laksa but milder and creamier. Rich, fragrant, and a Burmese household favourite.
Nan Gyi Thoke
Big noodle saladThick rice noodles tossed with chicken curry, fried onions, hard boiled egg, gram flour and lime. The dry noodle counterpart to Mohinga.
Burmese Curries
HinLess spicy than Indian, less sweet than Thai. Slow cooked, oil rich and built around a foundation of fried onion, garlic, ginger and turmeric. Eaten with rice.
How to Order at a Burmese Restaurant
If you are new to Burmese food and faced with an unfamiliar menu, a reliable order for a group of three or four people looks like this. Start with a tea leaf salad, because if the restaurant cannot make Laphet Thoke well, you can adjust expectations for the rest. Add a noodle dish, ideally Mohinga or Nan Gyi Thoke. Add a curry, either chicken or pork. Add a rice and a vegetable side. That is six dishes, comfortably feeding four people, and it gives you a complete cross section of the cuisine.
If you are ordering for one or two people, start with Mohinga. It is the most complete single dish on most Burmese menus, and it will tell you within a few mouthfuls whether the kitchen knows what it is doing.
How to Start Cooking Burmese Food at Home
The simplest entry point into Burmese cooking at home is Htamin Let Thok, the rice salad we have been referencing throughout this guide. It uses the core seven pantry ingredients, requires almost no equipment, and demonstrates every principle of Burmese eating in a single dish. The flavour profile is nutty rather than hot, condiments are mixed all the way through, and the result is satisfying in a way that surprises most people who try it for the first time.
You can build the topping mixture from scratch using our pantry guide, which takes around 45 minutes the first time you do it. Or you can take the considerably faster route, which is what we built Thami Letto for. The jar contains the entire topping mixture, made in small batches in Hackney using a 40 year old family recipe. Spoon it onto warm rice, mix all the way through, finish with lime, and you have eaten Burmese food the way it is meant to be eaten.
Either way, the door is open now. Burmese food is one of the great rewards of paying attention to the lesser known cuisines of the world.
✦ Burmawala Kitchen ✦
Start with the Easiest Burmese Dish
Thami Letto is the most labour intensive part of Burmese cooking, made by hand in Hackney and ready to use in minutes.
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