Sri Lanka is an island country that has a rich culture and heritage. Home to a multitude of ethnicities and languages, the ‘Pearl of the Indian Ocean' promises to give you an unforgettable culinary experience. The place enjoys a tropical climate and offers foods exploded with flavours. In Sri Lanka, rice and different types of curry is the staple food. Fish and various other kinds of seafood are also loved by the local people.
Sri Lanka is known for its long history of food traditions that had been created keeping in mind the nutrition and health benefits of different food ingredients. “Traditional foods of Sri Lanka clearly show a perfect blend of cultural diversity with human wisdom that has been evolved through generations in establishing a cultural heritage and an identity”, says a study published in the Journal of Ethnic Foods.
Let’s discover some of the most famous traditional dishes of Sri Lanka.
Appam
Originated from South India, Appam is a type of pancake usually eaten as breakfast. To prepare this dish, you need a mixture of fermented rice flour, coconut water, sugar, and coconut milk. Mix them well to create a batter and fry a scoop of it in a round-bottomed pot. Make sure it is even. You can make egg appam too by cracking an egg into the middle of the cowl-shaped pancake.
Lamprais
Introduced by Sri Lanka’s Dutch Burgher population, lamprais is a complex dish. It is consists of rice, seeni sambol, chilli sauce, meat curry, beef balls, vegetable, a shrimp paste, and sometimes fried boiled eggs too. All the foods are packed in a banana leaf, nicely folded and steamed.
Parippu
As mentioned in the beginning, Sri Lankan people are extremely fond of curries. And each curry will be different from the other in taste. Prippu is basically dal curry. To make this delicious dish, you need masoor dal, sautéed onions, tomatoes, and a few spices. In the end, when you combine all the ingredients and your dal is almost ready, you need to add some coconut milk to it to give the dal curry, the right thickness.