Vegan ✦ Burmese Cooking
A lot of vegan cooking is about substituting meat. Burmese cuisine has been quietly vegan friendly for centuries without needing to substitute anything. Here is what to know if you want to explore one of the most plant generous cuisines in Asia.
Most cuisines built around meat struggle to translate to a plant based kitchen. Whole categories of dishes do not survive the journey. Burmese food is different. The cuisine has a long tradition of vegetable forward cooking, deep respect for pulses and beans, and rice and noodle dishes where animal protein is incidental rather than central. Burmese Buddhism has long encouraged vegetarian eating, particularly during Wa So (Buddhist Lent), and entire restaurants in Yangon and Mandalay serve only vegetarian food.
That means a vegan exploring Burmese food does not need to compromise much. Most of the great Burmese salads, many of the soups, and a good portion of the noodle and rice dishes are either already vegan or one small substitution away from being vegan. The flavour is built on roasted peanuts, sesame, gram flour, fried onions and Burmese spices, which are all plant based by default.
This guide is for vegans who want to take Burmese cooking seriously, and for anyone curious about how a non European cuisine can be authentically plant based without feeling like a substitute. It builds on our guide to the Burmese pantry and our beginner's guide to Burmese food, both of which are worth reading first if you are new to the cuisine.
Burmese cuisine did not have to be reinvented to be vegan. Some of its best dishes were vegan all along. The work is in finding them.
Five Things That Are Already Vegan
The Flavour Base
The savoury, nutty, deeply satisfying flavour that defines Burmese cooking comes from roasted peanuts, toasted sesame seeds, fried gram flour, crispy fried onions and Burmese spices. Every single one of these is plant based. The umami depth that British cooks tend to associate with meat or fish comes here from roasted nuts, toasted seeds and golden fried onion oil. None of it is added on. All of it is inherent.
This is genuinely unusual in Asian cooking. Most Asian cuisines lean on fish sauce, oyster sauce or shrimp paste for their umami base. Burmese cooking can use those, but it does not have to. The peanut and sesame foundation does most of the work on its own.
The Bean and Lentil Tradition
Burma sits next to India and shares the Indian respect for pulses. Chickpeas, lentils, yellow split peas and butter beans appear in countless Burmese dishes. Pe Byouk is a yellow split pea curry. Pe Kyaw are chickpea fritters. Lethok Sone is a mixed bean salad served at the table for assembly. Tohu Thoke is a salad made from chickpea flour tofu, completely soy free and entirely vegan.
If you already cook with pulses, the Burmese way of treating them will feel familiar but distinct. The combination of pulse, fried onion, fish sauce alternative, lime and spices produces something nuttier and more aromatic than the Indian equivalents you might know.
Most of the Famous Salads
Burmese salads are bold mixed dishes, not the lettuce based affairs that English speakers usually associate with the word. Many of the most famous ones are either vegan or trivially adapted to be vegan. Laphet Thoke, the iconic fermented tea leaf salad, is naturally vegan if you skip the dried shrimp some versions include. Lethok Sone is plant based by default. Gyin Thoke is a ginger salad that is entirely vegan.
Even Htamin Let Thok, the rice salad that inspired our product, becomes fully vegan with one substitution. Skip the fish sauce, double down on the peanuts, sesame and fried onions, and you have a complete plant based meal that does not feel like it is missing anything.
The Vegetable Curries
Burmese curries use a lot of vegetables. Pumpkin curry, potato curry, gourd curry, okra curry, and bamboo shoot curry are all standard. They are typically built on a foundation of fried onion, garlic, ginger and turmeric, slow cooked in oil until the vegetables soften and absorb the flavour. With fish sauce swapped for soy sauce or a vegan fish sauce alternative, these are properly satisfying plant based curries.
Burmese vegetable curries tend to be less aggressively spiced than Indian curries and use less coconut than Thai curries. The character is gentler and more vegetable forward. Worth seeking out at Burmese restaurants and worth attempting at home.
The Noodle Salads
Dry noodle salads are one of the great Burmese contributions to world cuisine. Nan Gyi Thoke is the most famous, traditionally made with chicken curry but easily adapted with mushrooms or tofu. Mont Di is a noodle salad served with broth on the side. Kao Pyone Khauk Swe is a coconut noodle dish that becomes fully vegan when made with coconut milk and vegetables instead of chicken.
Crucially, the topping mixture that defines these salads, with peanuts, sesame, fried onion and gram flour, is the same one that goes into rice salads like Htamin Let Thok. Master that mixture once and an entire category of dishes opens up.
Four Vegan Burmese Dishes to Start With
If you want to begin cooking or ordering vegan Burmese, these four dishes are the natural entry points.
Vegan Htamin Let Thok
Rice mixed by handWarm rice tossed with peanuts, sesame, fried onions, gram flour and Burmese spices. The cuisine's flagship plant based dish.
Tohu Thoke
Chickpea tofu saladA chickpea flour tofu that is genuinely unlike anything else. Naturally vegan, gluten free, deeply Burmese.
Laphet Thoke
Tea leaf saladThe world famous fermented tea leaf salad. Earthy, sour, crunchy and entirely unique. Skip the dried shrimp some versions include.
Pumpkin Curry
Shwe Phayone HinA slow cooked pumpkin curry built on fried onion, garlic, ginger and turmeric. Comforting and properly Burmese.
The Fish Sauce Question
Fish sauce is the one ingredient that requires an honest conversation. It is central to Burmese cooking the way it is central to Thai and Vietnamese, providing the deep umami salinity that ties everything together. Removing it is not trivial.
The good news is that there are now genuinely good vegan fish sauces available. Brands like 4 Thieves Vinegar Co and Vegan Concepts make versions that get close to the real thing. A simpler swap is to use a combination of light soy sauce, a little mushroom seasoning powder and a squeeze of lime, which gets you most of the way there. For most Burmese vegetable dishes and salads, this approach is more than adequate.
A Note on Honesty
Fish sauce is not invisible in Burmese cooking. A traditional Burmese cook would notice its absence in a way that a casual diner might not. Vegan Burmese food is wonderful in its own right, but it is its own thing rather than a like for like replica. We think it is worth embracing on those terms.
Where Thami Letto Vegan Fits In
The hardest thing about cooking traditional Burmese rice salads at home is not finding ingredients. It is making the topping mixture. The peanuts need to be roasted properly, the gram flour fried until exactly golden, the onions sliced paper thin and fried until deeply caramelised. Done from scratch, the topping mixture for one bowl of Htamin Let Thok takes around 45 minutes.
That is what Thami Letto is for. The vegan version replaces the fish elements with a doubled peanut and sesame base, producing a richer, nuttier result than the original. It contains roasted peanuts, sesame seeds, gram flour, crispy fried onions, sunflower oil, lime juice and Burmese spices. Everything that makes a Burmese rice salad work, in a jar, ready to mix through warm rice or noodles.
It is also halal friendly and made by hand in Hackney by Aamna, who has been cooking Burmese food for over 40 years. If you want to explore Burmese cuisine as a vegan without spending hours assembling the topping yourself, this is the shortest path.
And if you want to go deeper into the cuisine generally, our beginner's guide to Burmese food covers the principles of how the cuisine works, and our pantry staples guide walks through the seven core ingredients you will need to cook it properly at home.
✦ Burmawala Kitchen ✦
Try the Vegan Burmese Original
Thami Letto Vegan. 100% plant based. Handmade in Hackney by a mother and son business. Halal friendly.
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