Cambodian Food: Top 11 National Dishes

I’ve just booked my ticket home to the UK after more than a year in Cambodia, and I still think I know less about the food than when I first got here. In truth, I’ve barely even scratched the surface of Cambodian cooking. I’ve not eaten every dish this beautiful country has to offer, far from it, and sometimes when I go to a new province I’ll find a dish that I’ve never even heard of.

My research hasn’t been helped by the fact that there are only a handful of books on Cambodian food, and only a couple of blogs worth reading. But I wanted to give you a list of dishes you should try if you do come here - the ones that really made an impact on me.

I began this blog scribbling in a roadside cafe in Phnom Penh, and tried to draw up a list of my top 10 Cambodian dishes. It wasn’t easy. I don’t mean finding ten, I mean whittling it down from the 20 or so I’d scrawled into my Moleskin notebook.

Which ones would I leave out? Would I shove in a couple of desserts for balance, or just the ones I liked best? In the end I settled for 11 dishes - I couldn’t see a way of cutting it down to 10 and I still had to leave out some excellent ones like squid with green Kampot pepper (pic above). So here goes...

1. Cambodian Beef Soup

This is a great dish and one of the best communal meals I’ve ever had. Cambodians love eating - they graze all day - and are very passionate about food. And I love the arguments that develop about whether, or when, the noodles should go in, whether the thinly-sliced raw beef fillet should be mixed with beaten egg first. And how long should it poach for? Forty seconds? There are few finer things in life than friends sitting around a table squabbling about food while topping themselves up with endless jugs of beer.

It begins as a bubbling bowl of beef stock containing chunks of tougher cuts that have been cooked until they dissolve in your mouth in a pleasing squelch of fat and gristle. The bowl is put on a gas burner on the table and so many side plates appear that there is hardly room for the beer jugs.

There are plates of vegetables, fresh herbs like mint, holy basil, and culantro (saw-toothed coriander), a couple of raw eggs, beef fillet, yellow balls of egg noodles, white balls of rice noodles, chillies, prahok, lemongrass, salt and always Kampot pepper. So many in fact that you could probably order the dish 100 times and never have it the same way twice - depending on who’s doing the cooking that is.

2. Prahok Ling

This is an incredibly powerful dish, flavoured with Cambodia’s notoriously foul-smelling fermented fish paste, prahok. The paste is fried with hand-chopped pork, onion, garlic, egg, and chilli.

And it’s so strong there are strict Government laws in place to ensure you only get a small saucer of the stuff, which you eat with boiled jasmine rice and chunks of raw aubergine, cucumber, green tomato, and white cabbage to take the edge off the extremely pungent taste. 

I’ve always been into bold, salty flavours, and for me it’s absolutely delicious, but it wouldn’t suit everyone. Recipe here...

3. Spit-Roast Calf (Koo Dut)

When I first got here, you used to see whole calves being slowly cooked in the street, and what a lovely sight it was too. But a couple of months ago, the Cambodian government, in its wisdom, decided to ban restaurants and stalls from spit-roasting cows in public – over claims they incite violence and are bad for the image of Cambodia.

Now you won't see a spit-roast calf on display anywhere in Cambodia (they're being cooked in kitchens and yards at the back). But although the theatre has gone, and Phnom Penh’s stretch of koo dut restaurants are noticeably quieter as a result, it’s still a dish worth trying.

The hunks of grilled veal are always served the same way, with a tray of crudités, salt, pepper and lime dip (tuk meric), and prahok sauce. The cooks get to work early in the day by butchering and washing the carcass, and then filling the belly with lemon grass, lime leaves and rice paddy herbs before sewing up the cavity. The beast then slowly spit-roasts for hours over charcoal and wood.

4. Salt, Pepper And Lime Dip (Tuk Meric)

Tuk meric is an incredibly simple dip made from salt, Cambodia’s wonderful Kampot pepper, and lime juice. But my God it works. You’ll get it with everything from hunks of barbecued calf to Cambodia’s horrendous beef lok lak, a version of Vietnam’s far better dish of the same name. 

But it goes best with freshly-boiled seafood, particularly blue swimmer crabs, which although contain little brown head meat, and virtually no morsels in the claws, more than make up for it with the generously fleshy chine.

In restaurants, they usually serve a mix of two thirds freshly-ground black pepper to one third salt, then carefully squeeze in two or three lime quarters and mix it in front of you. It might seem a laughably simple procedure that would scarcely trouble even the most cack-handed cook. But they take it as seriously as a chef de rang would the preparation of crepe suzette, pressed duck, or table-carved rib of beef, squeezing in the ‘correct’ amount of lime juice until there is the right moistness to the sauce.

You’ll have few better days than sitting at a restaurant in Kep’s famous crab market, looking out to sea, while supping cold beer and dipping freshly-boiled crab into this incredible dip.

5. Khor Trey Swey Kchey

This is freshwater fish braised in a mildly-spiced palm sugar sauce with grated green mango on top. I’ve had the dish a few times and it’s wonderful.

It sums up the rustic nature of Cambodian food - the contrast of the different flavours in the dish rather than how balanced it is - a common feature in cuisines that haven’t been refined. 

There’s a delicious combination between the sweetness of the fish, and its sticky, slightly caramelised sauce, and the very sour green mango on top with the herbs, and then the crunch of raw vegetables like green tomato and cucumber.

6. Chicken And Salted Lime Soup

This is traditionally served at weddings out here, but is actually of Chinese origin - a country that has probably had the biggest influence on Cambodian food.

Ngam ngov (salted limes) were brought to Cambodia by Chinese immigrants more than 700 years ago. The limes are dried in the sun and then stored in brine, so they soften and take on an incredibly sour, slightly soapy flavour.

The duck or chicken is deep-fried and then cooked in water flavoured with kaffir lime leaves, galangal, lemon grass, garlic, fish sauce, and the salted limes. Generally, the limes are used in soup, but you sometimes find them chopped up in Chinese-style stir-fry dishes, usually with strips of chicken and herbs. Recipe here

 7. Chicken Porridge Soup

Cambodia is truly the land of soups. I don’t think you’ll find a country with such a high proportion of soups on restaurant menus, and there is nearly always a broth at every family meal. But of all the great broths in Cambodia, and there are plenty, chicken porridge soup (bo bor sachmoan) is my favourite.

It’s traditionally eaten at breakfast and topped with nutty, browned, but not burnt garlic, and the herby fragrance of chopped culantro. As you dig in, there is the occasional limp crunch of bean sprouts poached in the heat of the broth, and the pleasing discovery of a little piece of chicken or bone to suck on.

Then there is the chicken stock, hinting of lime leaf and lemon grass, and julienne strips of fresh ginger that are, like the bean sprouts, stirred in at the end moments before service so they take on an increasingly cooked texture as you finish the soup.

Then there’s the soapy richness of the cubes of blood pudding, made from pork and chicken blood, and the yolks taken from the hens' ovaries, which glint like amber pearls. I could go on...

8. Fried Pork With Chilli, Lemon Grass And Holy Basil

Generally, Cambodians don’t use too many chillies in their food, the same way as say Thais do. Instead, they serve it separately – usually sliced chilli in a saucer, pickled tiny chillies in a jar, and a fiery relish of sliced red chillies and garlic, so people can put as much on as they want.

But this brilliant dish helps destroy the popular myth that Cambodian food is never spicy. I’ve tasted the dish in many restaurants and homes, and it’s always eye-wateringly hot - just like the green mango, papaya, and Khmer beef salads they serve, particularly in the Battambang region.

A huge handful of holy basil is thrown in, and cooks down like spinach. Its clove-like taste works well with the chopped fresh and dried chilli, and gives the dish a deep, spicy flavour, which is lightened by the zesty, perfumed taste of lemon grass - an integral ingredient to Khmer cuisine.

It needs no accompaniment, other than a soup, a bowl of sticky rice, and a kettle of cold tea poured into a mug of ice and drunk through a straw.

9. Cambodian Dried Fish Omelette

The best version I had was made with smoked fish that had been soaked in brine, and then grilled over smouldering wood for eight hours until they were hard and chewy. But mostly salted, dried fish are used.

The fish is broken up into small pieces and then added to a pan with chopped onion and garlic and fried for a couple of minutes. A couple of beaten eggs and black pepper are added, and the omelette is served very thin and dry with a plate of raw vegetables and rice. It makes a very savoury, rich breakfast.

10. Samlor Ktis

This is one of the many sour soups you’ll find in Cambodia, and is incredibly easy and quick to make. But like most good dishes, its strength lies in its simplicity.

It’s usually made from fish or chicken and flavoured with chunks of fresh pineapple, Cambodia’s mild kroeung curry paste, and coconut water - an almost colourless liquid found in young, green coconuts. It’s amazing the fresh, clean flavour achieved from just a handful of ingredients. Recipe here...

11. Grilled Pork With Rice And Pickles

This has become one of my favourite breakfasts. There’s something incredible in the way the pickled vegetables, chewy slices of grilled pork, and the pork and chicken broth work together with pickled chillies from the condiment trays to make something amazing.

The pork is marinated for hours and then slowly grilled. It has such a deliciously salty flavour and intense red colour that I can’t get enough of it. You pour spoonfuls of the clear broth over the rice and pork and then dig in.

The pickle is usually made from carrot, cucumber and daikon. They are cut on a mandolin into julienne strips and then salted. The water produced is drained off and then they are soused in a pickling mixture of water, white vinegar, sugar, salt and spices. Think kimchi without all the PR. 

MORE: Cambodian Food: The Chef Hailed As A Genius By Raymond Blanc


:: My new book 'Down And Out In Padstow And London' about my disastrous attempt to train as a chef, including stints at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck, Rick Stein's and other restaurants, is available as a paperback and eBook on Amazon CLICK HERE

Phsar Prahok: One Of The Smelliest Places In The World

I was in an area where no-one speaks any English, and I’d got lost trying to find what I’d been told was one of the smelliest places in the world - Cambodia’s prahok-making hub, Phsar Prahok (fish paste market), on the banks of the Sanke river near Battambang, where hundreds of tons of freshwater fish are bought and sold each year.

How anyone would ever know it was one of the smelliest places in the world, I have no idea, and I’ve been to a few. But mention the name and even Cambodians hold their nose. I kept cycling up and down a mud track lined with stalls, and stopped to ask people for directions. But no-one knew what I was going on about.

The smell of rotten fish was definitely getting stronger though. There was just a gentle breeze in the hot midday sun, but sometimes with the wind on my face as I cycled, there was the distant whiff of Cambodia’s infamously smelly fermented fish paste.

I kept cycling, and then stopped to ask an old woman for directions. She was selling fresh spring rolls at the side of the road. She had five chairs outside her stall, and her cats took up two of them. I didn’t want to push them off. They looked vicious. The sort of cats used to keep snakes away.

I thought about dark, hooded encounters with monocled cobras hissing like garage tyre inflators. One of the cats yawned at me and stretched out its claws. It licked its lips, and we both looked round in the same direction. The wind had definitely changed. The smell of rotten fish was coming from somewhere behind those trees to the north-east.

I asked the woman again and she kept shaking her head when I said Phsar Prahok. Then she asked if I could speak French. She started to babble and slowly a few words came to me, and before I knew it she was shouting Phsar Prahok exactly the way I’d said it to her, and I’d gone through a number of possibilities.

She slapped me on the chest, as if to say ‘why didn’t you say so all along’, and then pointed to where the ginger cat was drooling. A mile later, the stench of fermented fish was breathtaking. It smelled worse than the crocodile farm I’d been forced to spend two days in for a story about whooping tourists hurling live chickens and ducks into crocodile pens.

It’s so strong if you get some on your hands while dipping chunks of barbecued veal and raw vegetables in prahok sauce, you soon know about it. Even bleach doesn’t get rid of the smell. Or as someone once said: “To describe prahok as pungent is being too charitable. It smells like it should be buried with corn seed.”

There was a huge fish processing plant hidden behind iron gates and then further on, where the boats were moored on the Sanke, a long line of huts filled with people covered in fish guts. Men were offloading fish they’d netted from the river, and the locals were sorting them into plastic barrels and crates before the real process of prahok fermentation would begin, exactly the way their ancient ancestors had done to preserve fish and guarantee a year-round supply of protein.

The fish are cleaned and then salted and mashed underfoot in barrels before being left to rot in the sun for a day - which helps kick off the fermentation process. More salt is added. Then they are weighted and left in huge barrels for months, depending on the desired taste or price, with prices rising in the rainy season when the paste becomes scarce.

River fish are put in barrels and salted...

The fish ferment and become a grey, cheese-like paste...

Prahok chopped and ready to cook...

The taste and smell varies largely from batch to batch, depending on the type of fish used, how carefully they’ve been prepped, and the time, skill and methods used to ferment them. The cheapest stuff is filled with bones, fins, and scales like the bag of prahok I’d bought from a street stall on the coast last month. It looked like it had been made from crab bait, and had a disconcerting ripeness.

In some of the other huts they were smoking and curing fish. Racks of fish no bigger than minnows were being slowly grilled over charcoal coals until deep bronze and rigid. Some of the larger fish were being turned into maam, a more expensive version of prahok. It’s salted for 24 hours, then stacked in a jar with salted rice and galangal, and stored for less time (usually a month) until it becomes sour.

It’s these fermented fish products that define traditional Khmer food and differentiate it from the strong culinary influences of China, Vietnam, Thailand, and much further back, India and Sri Lanka.

Many countries use fermented pastes and sauces, of course, to add the savoury, meaty ‘fifth taste’ of umami to food. China and Japan have soy sauce and miso made from fermented soy beans, wheat flour, water, and salt. Vietnam and Thailand have fish sauce, drained from salted and fermented anchovies, prawns or squid. Malaysia has its blocks of fish paste, or blacan, and there are many other varieties around the world.

But none of them have the cheesy punch of prahok. Most people agree it tastes of blue cheese. But it’s more the harshness and saltiness of Danish blue rather than the creamier, more refined flavour of say Roquefort or stilton. And always there on the palate and in the nose is the smack of rotten fish, as though you’ve been cutting skata with the cheese knife.

For that reason, you don’t see it on restaurant menus much, especially in places where tourists go. Sadly, many Khmers talk about how it’s now looked down on by Cambodia’s emerging middle class as a reminder of the bad old days. They say it’s the smell of poverty - a remembrance of their tough, previous lives working on the farm.

It’s certainly true of Cambodia’s highly aspirational pop videos, which always seem to feature affluent, pale-skinned Khmer couples posing around in shiny SUVs that would keep a whole village in food for a year. You never see them munching prahok at a street stall. It’s always pizza, burgers or fried chicken in soulless, chain-style restaurants.

It breaks my heart more than the appalling car crash at the end, which is how most Khmer music videos seem to end, with a girl crying hysterically, holding the lifeless body of her boyfriend in her arms, and screaming “WHY!” at the sky. Which is not the best viewing when you’re being forced to watch it on a bus clattering away on tyres with less grip than a pickled egg.

After an hour, I could take no more and cycled across the bridge to the old woman’s stall. The cats were still there, but this time there was a seat free. The ginger cat sniffed the air again and looked at me. The smell had suddenly got a lot stronger. 

:: MORE: Prahok: My Secret Addiction To Cambodia's Fermented Fish 'Cheese'

:: MORE: A Umami-Packed Dish That Makes Marmite Taste Like Boiled Cabbage

:: BOOK UPDATE:

I want to apologise for the very poor delivery times of the paperback version of my new food book Down And Out In Padstow And London. For reasons that are beyond me, Amazon have had problems distributing recent batches. It’s something to do with the wrong metadata being input, whatever that means. But Completely Novel who print my book have promised they are trying to sort it out.

I don’t know how long it will continue, but I’ve been told that books ordered through Amazon will arrive soon, and they will obviously not take your money until they do post the book to your address. To help remedy this, an eBay page has been set up to sell my book. So if you want the book in the next few days, then cancel your order at Amazon and buy the book HERE... For the eBook version click HERE...