Sri Lankan Egg hoppers

A Sri Lankan-style breakfast is amongst the greatest meals this asbestos-tongued foodie has had the pleasure of meeting and eating. And, in my opinion, the undisputed stars of this Sri Lankan morning show are Sri Lankan egg hoppers.

Even in the morning Sri Lankan cuisine is fuelled by chilli, curry leaves, cinnamon and black pepper. And while no two breakfasts are ever the same, you can expect, at the very least, fragrant curries and dahls served with fluffy bowls of red heirloom rice or coconutty milk rice, a selection of sambols and chutneys and crispy roti and the ubiquitous hopper.

Hoppers come in a variety of styles. There’s the very popular idiyappam (string hoppers), a steamed lacy noodle pancake made from a hot-water dough of red or white rice meal. And then there’s appam, deep basket-like pancakes made from fermented rice flour and coconut milk.

On my recent  travels to extraordinary Sri Lanka, my  favourite version of these were hoppers topped with a fried egg and a generous dollop of sweet spicy Sri Lankan seeni sambol (a sweet, sour and spicy onion relish). In fact, I may have devoured my body weight in them and have been craving them every since.

Keen to introduce the family to the wonders of Sri Lankan egg hoppers, I decided to see if I could recreate the bowl-shaped breakfast beauties at home. I brought a couple of hopper pans back with me from Sri Lanka (you can purchase them online, though at a pinch you could use a small non-stick wok with a fitted lid) and after discovering no two hopper recipes appear to be the same, experimented with a hopper mixture until I managed to get it just the right lacy and crisp, yet slightly steamed texture.

The whole family are so hooked, Sri Lankan egg hoppers are now on the menu most weekends at Casa Eats World.

Sri Lankan Egg hoppers

April 16, 2020

by Aleney de Winter

Cuisine Sri Lankan

Category Asian food Recipes

Ingredients

• 10 grams dried yeast
• 1 tbs sugar
• ¼ cup warm water
• 400 grams rice flour
• 400 ml coconut milk
• 400 ml light coconut milk
• 8 Eggs
• 2 egg whites, whisked
• Salt

Instructions

1. Add yeast and sugar to lukewarm water and let rest for 20 minutes to activate.
2. Place rice flour in a large bowl and form a well to add the activated yeast mix.
3. Add 400ml of coconut milk and stir.
4. Slowly add remaining light coconut milk, stirring constantly until the mixture forms a smooth batter. (Note: to get a good pouring consistency you may need to add up to a ½ cup of water.)
5. Cover bowl with a tea towel and let stand in a warm place for approximately 90 minutes to double in size.
6. When you’re ready to cook, stir whisked eggwhites into coconut mixture and add salt.
7. Heat hopper pan over a medium heat and add a ladleful of the mixture, and swirl to evenly coat sides of pan.
8. Add an egg and cover with lid.

Tags

Recipes,

Sri Lanka,

Sri Lankan food

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An award-winning travel writer and photographer, Aleney de Winter was fresh from school when she first set off to explore the far reaches of Australia with a two-man tent and a beaten-up Kingswood for company. Three decades, and two kids later, and she's still on the go, with her itchy-footed offspring in tow.