Our Family-Friendly Guide to Sri Lankan Food – With Recipes

Sri Lankan Food is hands down some of the most delicious food we have had on our family travels. In fact, BBC Good Food has said that Sri Lankan food is its No.1 trending food in 2019. Everything is so fresh and tasty with some cheeky heat from the chillies!

If you visit Fose fruit and vegetable market in Colombo’s Pettah district or any fruit and vegetable market in Sri Lanka, you’ll get a sense of what goes into your Sri Lankan cuisine to make it so delicious. The market really is an assault on all the senses, but well worth a visit.

Exploring the fresh fruit and vegetables in Fose market in Colombo

Key ingredients in Sri Lankan dishes

Sri Lanka was on the old spice route for a reason and if you go on a spice tour as part of your trip you’ll see why. We were lucky enough to have a guided walk around our Sri Lankan tea estate accommodation near Matale – Strathisla Tea Estate.

On the walk we saw tea plantations (of course!) but also all sorts of spices. It’s easy to see why Sri Lanka is also called by some, ‘The Spice Island’. On a tour you will see spices growing wild (although some are farmed). The main spices used in Ceylon curry are:

Curry Leaves
Turmeric
Clove
Cinnamon
Pepper
Lemongrass
Nutmeg
Mace

Spice Tour in Sri Lanka

During the tour the kids got to smell and taste some of the spices. Knowing what goes into their food helps them have a greater appreciation for it and it was very educational for them. They really enjoyed the food in Sri Lanka, especially the spicy Sri Lankan chicken curry.

Here are our favourite Sri Lankan dishes with a little explanation as to what they are so you know what to expect when you visit Sri Lanka. We’ve also included a couple of Sri Lankan recipes for the ones we have tried out at home.

Sri Lankan Hoppers

These are a family favourite. They are bowl shaped pancakes with crispy edges and a breakfast staple across the island. The batter is poured into a small wok and swirled around to give it the bowl shape. Part way through cooking, an egg is cracked in. Traditionally these hoppers are served with a variety of onion sambol, chillies and coconut sambol but they are so versatile. In Unawatuna we tried eggs benedict hoppers with bacon at Bedspace Kitchen.

Something to be aware of, however, is that not everywhere will offer them for breakfast. The batter has to ferment for a few hours, and if they have not made it the previous night, they won’t be able to make them on demand at breakfast.

If you want to try hoppers before you go to Sri Lanka and are based near London, you can go to Hoppers – a hugely popular restaurant at the moment. You could also try making them yourself by following the BBC Good Food recipe.

Sri Lankan Hoppers

Coconut Sambol

We were so enamoured with coconut sambol (served with pretty much every meal in Sri Lanka), that we decided to try cooking lessons to see how it’s made. We ended up on a frenzied shopping trip around Galle by tuk tuk on the hunt for a coconut grater. We think you’ll agree it is not your usual tourist souvenir but nothing else grates the coconut quite as well as this.

Our very own coconut grater

We found one eventually and here’s the recipe we use to make coconut sambol at home:

2-3 cups freshly ground coconut
¼ red onion finely chopped
½ small tomato
½ tsp salt
½ – 1 tsp of chilli flakes
½ tsp chilli powder
Pinch black pepper
Juice of ½ a lime
Mix all the ingredients together… done!

Coconut Sambol

Sri Lankan Curry and Rice

If you see Sri Lankan rice and curry on the menu, it will usually be served as a curry of your choice with several accompanying vegetable curries. These can be jackfruit or pumpkin and they are served with plain rice and dahl. There are many more types of Sri Lankan vegetable curry than meat curry but Sri Lankan chicken curry is also popular. We loved the Sri Lankan pineapple curry too with its spicy sweetness.

With such variety there will be something for everyone but these curries will most likely be pre-made and so varying the spice level for the kids is not always easy.

Sri Lankan Curry and Rice

Sri Lankan Dhal Curry

Dhal curry is served with most meals. It is made from red lentils cooked in coconut milk. Added to this are sautéed onions, garlic, tomatoes (optional) and fresh green chillies. Mix in other spices like cumin seeds, turmeric, mustard seeds and curry leaves. Such a lovely creamy coconut infused dish. Watch out – it can be spicy!

If you would like to try making it, here is a recipe from a cookery class we took in Ella

1 cup lentils
½ cup water
2 cloves garlic
1 green chilli
¼ red onion
Handful curry leaves
½ teaspoon turmeric, cumin seeds and mustard seeds
1 x 400ml tin coconut milk

Wash and soak the lentils for 30 mins. Sautée the onions and garlic with the chilli for a few minutes. Then add the spices and mix in the lentils. Slowly simmer in the water and when the lentils are soft, add coconut milk. Season to taste.

Selection of Sri Lankan food

Sri Lankan Kottu Roti

If you hear a lot of clanging and banging coming from a kitchen in Sri Lanka, chances are you are listening to someone making kottu roti. It started out as street food but is very common to see on restaurant menus now. It’s basically a stir-fry with pieces of roti (bread) mixed together with finely shredded vegetables or pieces of meat, soya sauce, spices, ginger and garlic, on a flat iron skillet using two metal cleavers with wooden handles. It isn’t usually spicy so it’s a great dish for the kids. A modern twist is to add cheese but this was not a winner with us!

Sri Lankan Kottu Roti

Chicken Rice

This chicken fried rice dish is not particularly Sri Lankan but we’re putting it on here because you’ll find it on the menu of most Sri Lankan restaurants and it was an absolute winner with our boys. It’s not spicy and it’s quite like the Chinese style egg fried chicken with rice. There are some green bits in it which, despite having an irrational fear that anything green will poison them, they wolfed it down with no complaints. It’s a great dish when they’re not feeling like a curry.

Lamprais

Lamprais actually comes from a Dutch word that translates as ‘a packet of food’, and was originally made by descendants of colonial Europeans. It consists of boiled eggs, eggplant, frikkadels/meat balls, mixed meats (soya for vegetarians) and sambol (see explanation above).

This is mixed with rice and then infused with some lovely Sri Lankan spices like cardamom, cloves and cinnamon before being wrapped in a banana leaf and baked in the oven at a low temperature for several hours. In our time there this seemed to one of a few staple Sri Lankan dishes, on offer in most restaurants.

Coconut Roti

This is a type of Sri Lankan flatbread with a delicious coconut flavour and a hint of chilli.

1/4 cup of green chilli, finely chopped
3 cups of plain flour
a pinch of salt
1 cup of desicated coconut
1 tablespoon of canola oil
1 cup of water

Mix everything together, shape into balls and flatten. Cook both sides on a medium heat in a heavy based pan until they are nicely browned.

Coconut Roti

Eggplant/aubergine curry

A truly classic Sri Lankan dish and one of our favourites. It is called a curry but is actually more like a relish so we ordered it as a side. The eggplant slices are deep-fried until brown and then combined with, chilli powder, ground mustard seeds, cloves, salt, sugar and vinegar to create the almost sweet caramelised relish. This is then added to fried shallots, crushed garlic and shredded ginger. Mouth-wateringly good!

Top Tip : if you would like to try authentic Sri Lankan food where the locals eat (and we would highly recommend this), then go to somewhere that is very busy! The locals are not going to eat somewhere with a poor food hygiene reputation and it will undoubtedly be delicious and very budget friendly.