The national cuisine of Cambodia has absorbed the best traditions of cooking dishes from neighboring countries and at the same time has retained its uniqueness and originality.

It's safe to say that every Cambodian can eat anything. Food includes insects (beetles, grasshoppers, spiders, larvae), birds (from embryos to mature individuals), all kinds of fish and seafood, meat, shellfish, plants, vegetables and fruits. Moreover, the same dishes in neighboring houses can be prepared completely differently; each housewife will use her own seasonings and the taste will be two completely different dishes.

Main course

The main dish in Cambodia, as in neighboring Vietnam and Thailand, is rice. It can be served for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Most often it is a side dish for meat or fish, but can also be used as a dish on its own. Cambodians do not use as many spices when preparing it as other peoples, but they add a lot of herbs and oil to rice. It can be different - nut or coconut, palm or peanut. The most common rice dishes:

• “baicha” - fried rice with meat or seafood, generously sprinkled with herbs and seasoned with all kinds of sauces;
• “un-som-chro” - rice with pork and soy;
• “un-som-che” - rice baked with bananas.

First meal

In addition to rice, pasta is often eaten in Cambodia. They are mainly used to prepare first courses - soups and stews. The most common first course is soup with noodles, herbs and meat, seafood or fish (“kitevu”). It is usually served for breakfast. Tourists will be offered kiteva in any self-respecting cafe or restaurant. But each of them will have its own recipe. So, one cook will put dried fish in this soup, another will throw in a handful of snails, a third will “dilute” the taste with frog legs, and a fourth will simply add an egg.

Also, in almost every home, rice noodle dishes are prepared (a heritage from their Asian neighbors). It can be simply fried noodles, noodles with fish sauce, or noodles with any seasoning added, and there are dozens or even hundreds of types in Cambodian cuisine.

Milk products

Fresh milk is very rare in Cambodia, but cheeses can be very good.

Meat

Cambodians still prefer poultry when it comes to meat. The remaining types are not so popular and are found on the table much less often.

Fish and seafood

These foods occupy an important place in the daily menu of the average Cambodian. Many soups are prepared from fish:

• “samla-machu-banle” is the most popular option;
• “dtrai-chin-nyung” - sour soup and many others.

In addition to soups, seafood main courses are also popular: fish baked with rice, steamed fish, fried fish, fish curry with coconut sauce, fish paste with herbs and spices, stuffed fish, as well as hundreds of types of boiled and dried and smoked fish.

Bakery

Cambodians are very fond of fresh bread and all kinds of buns (the colonial influence of the French Republic is evident), so on almost every street you can find a small bakery supplying freshly baked bread for your morning meal.

Vegetables and fruits

Cambodians love vegetables, but rarely use them as main dishes; most often they are served as a side dish or served as salad components. By the way, local salads are very unique and combine unusual tastes and aromas. They can be served hot or cold. Typically, a salad consists of meat or fish and vegetables, seasoned with herbs and oil. Vegetables can be used either fresh or pickled or pickled. The most interesting thing is that harvesting can occur at different stages of vegetable ripening, so the same fruit can have completely different tastes and give the dish an original flavor.

The number of fruits consumed by residents and guests of Cambodia is simply impossible to list. The names of some of them do not even have an analogue in Russian. The most famous are watermelons, melons, bananas, mangoes, pineapples, mangosteens, pomelo, longans and papayas. In addition, every tourist should try one of the exotic fruits called durian. It is difficult to decide on this, since its smell is disgusting, but the taste, as experts say, is simply delicious and unlike anything else.

Dessert

For dessert, in addition to fruit, all kinds of pies, cakes, cookies, fruit puddings and ice cream are served.

Beverages

Cambodians rarely drink plain water. And rightly so. After all, they have a huge list of national drinks that can easily quench your thirst on the hottest day. For example, “samrong” is an infusion based on the seeds of a tree with the same name. Or here’s another “dtyuk-roll” - a drink made from various fruits and egg yolk.

We can only envy the variety of freshly squeezed juices; we will never be able to try some of them in our own country. The natives drink soda with lemon juice, coconut milk, palm tree sap, and green tea (mostly Chinese). But coffee is practically not popular among them, since its quality leaves much to be desired.

Alcohol

Residents of Cambodia prefer different types of beer. The drink is popular both locally (it is quite cheap and the taste is quite good) and imported varieties (mainly Heineken and Tiger). Cambodia also has its own whiskey, but its taste is quite specific, so it does not attract the attention of tourists too much. In large cities you can buy almost any imported alcoholic drink.

Hello friends! We recently visited Cambodia and really appreciated the Khmer cuisine. One of her main dishes is Amok. This is a very thick soup with fish, meat (chicken or beef), vegetables or tofu (vegetarian Amok). Amok can be found in almost any cafe, it costs on average 3-5 dollars, the portions are large. There are exotic ingredients in this dish, but we will tell you what you can replace them with to prepare Amok at home. Treat yourself to the national Khmer dish!

Recipe for Amok with fish at home

We fell in love with Amok from the first spoon, and we ordered it every day in Siem Reap. And every time in a new cafe. The Amok dish is prepared differently, but it always turns out delicious. Amok can be eaten on its own, or you can cook rice to go with it separately. In Southeast Asia, Amok dish can also be found under the names Mok in Laos or Kho Mok in Thailand.

There are many recipes for Amok, which may differ slightly from each other. In general, the Amok recipe consists of two parts: preparing the curry paste and the main ingredient (fish, meat, etc.).

First step: prepare the curry paste. To do this you need to take:

• half or a whole chili pepper (if you like it spicy);
• 2-3 cloves of garlic;
• 1 onion, preferably red;
• 1-2 cm of galangal root;
• 3-6 kaffir leaves;
• 3 lemongrass stalks;
• 1 teaspoon salt;
• 400 ml coconut milk.
• Place all ingredients except coconut milk in a blender and grind. Then gradually add coconut milk and continue grinding the solid ingredients until the mixture becomes smooth.

The amok dish is only Khmer in origin. But in fact, it’s very tasty.

Then we proceed to the second stage - preparing the main ingredient.

For this we need 400 g of fish fillet (white, not red). You can pre-marinate the fish in salt and pepper. Place the fish in a heated frying pan and fry in sunflower oil.

We combine all the ingredients.

Pour the resulting curry mixture into a saucepan and place over medium heat. Stir; the curry should thicken. Meanwhile, you can add pepper, salt, sugar, and fish sauce to taste. When the curry starts to thicken, add the fish fillets. Continue stirring for another two minutes - and that’s it, the fish Amok is ready!

The second option for preparing the Amok fish dish.

Mix all the hard ingredients for the curry paste and grind them in a blender. Don't add coconut milk yet! Then beat the egg, mix it with fish sauce, prepared curry paste and coconut milk. Add pieces of fish fillet to the resulting mixture. Place the dish in a steam bath for 20 minutes until the curry thickens.

Recipe for Amok with chicken at home

We also start by preparing the spice paste.

• several small pieces of ginger;
• 3-4 cloves of garlic;
• chili pepper to taste;
• 1 onion, preferably red;
• 4-5 kaffir lime leaves;
• 1 tablespoon turmeric powder;
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil;
• 1-2 stalks of lemongrass;
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce or 1 tablespoon salt.

Grind everything in a blender.

This is how much an amok dish costs in Cambodia (namely, in a restaurant around our hotel in Siem Reap).

Then we proceed to the second stage. We will need:

• 2 chicken breasts;
• two handfuls of green beans;
• 400 ml coconut milk;
• red or green bell pepper (optional);
• You can also add mushrooms, spinach, and tofu if desired.

Place the prepared curry paste in a frying pan, fry it for 3-4 minutes and add coconut milk. Boil the mixture over low heat for 5-10 minutes.

Separately, fry the chicken in sunflower oil. When it is almost ready, add soy sauce, curry paste in coconut milk, green beans and peppers. Cook all this in a frying pan for another 5-10 minutes. Amok chicken dish is ready!

How to replace exotic ingredients

• Coconut milk can be replaced with low-fat (10-15%) cream.
• Instead of galangal you can use ginger.
• Lemongrass and kaffir lime Can be replaced with lemon zest, lime peel or lemon juice. You can do without it.
• Turmeric can be replaced with saffron or curry.
• Instead of fish sauce you can add soy.

Bon Appetit everyone!

Having moved to Sihanoukville, we radically changed our attitude towards food in Cambodia and Khmer cuisine. In this article we will try to give you a complete picture of what food we buy, how we eat and what the hospitable Khmers feed us. In Sihanoukville, as a rule, food is not only cheap, but in most cases it is simply perfectly prepared.

Somehow this is how we imagined food in Cambodia and Khmer cuisine

Food in Cambodia reviews

Having visited Cambodia for the first time and getting to know it only through the city, we were not imbued with Khmer cuisine. More precisely, we didn’t even notice her. We still didn’t understand what food to try in Cambodia back then; the local cuisine seemed disgusting and unappetizing to us, sometimes even causing a nauseating reflex. We saw only some dirty cafes for locals and grimy shops with burnt fish and sticky rice.

During those two days of our stay in Cambodia, when we were watching, we went to eat at an Indian restaurant, where the total bill was at least $20 for one meal. You have to be a wealthy traveler to live in Cambodia and eat every day in such establishments, we used to think.

But then we arrived in Sihanoukville and our opinion changed radically.

One of our favorite cafes

Sihanoukville is a paradise for gourmets and a paradise for those who simply love to eat delicious food. The food in the cafe here is very tasty. Moreover, in any cafe. We go to the cafe every day. There is no other way to do it here, since there is no kitchen in our guest house, and it is not profitable to buy food in Cambodia, since almost all the usual products are imported and, accordingly, are expensive.

There are plenty of cafes in Sihanoukville. By Cambodian standards, these are quite decent establishments. Only here it is clean and you feel like a white man. Their prices are practically the same. Near the beach, of course, it’s more expensive, but in other places it’s about the same.

Breakfast

On average, breakfast in Cambodia in a mid-level street tourist cafe without air conditioning will cost $3-4 per person. This is a standard breakfast - an omelette with a baguette and coffee.

For breakfast we sometimes have an omelet and a baguette. This breakfast is very filling

In order to save money, we most often have breakfast at home. To do this, we buy corn flakes and milk, as well as bread, butter and cheese for sandwiches. This Egyptian cereal costs $3, and Vietnamese milk costs $1.85.

Bread costs $1, butter $3, cheese also $3 per 300 grams. With this breakfast option, we spend no more than $3 for two people per day for breakfast.

Where can I order a transfer from the airport?

We use the service - KiwiTaxi
We ordered a taxi online and paid by card. We were met at the airport with a sign with our name on it. We were taken to the hotel in a comfortable car. You've already talked about your experience In this article

Breakfast in Cambodia

Dinner

And what soups there are in Sihanouk! Guys, they make curry soups here, thick, a little spicy, just what you need. The fillings are different, it can be with fish, it can be with meat or with vegetables, potatoes are present in every dish. Served with rice. This portion is enough for us to eat.

Favorite curry soup
The cost of soup is $3

Cambodia has amazing barbecue (BBQ)

The grilled meat is simply amazing. Almost every cafe has a grill where you can cook a delicious steak or ribs for just $3-4.

Pork steak for $3.5. Small portion

Large, medium and small portions

Cambodia has this feature. The menu shows prices for small, medium and large portions. Personally, although we love to eat so much that we then groan when we’ve eaten too much, a small portion is more than enough.

You won't believe it, but this is (!) a small portion of chicken fillet for $3. Potatoes and salad included in price

We are impressed that the menu has a wide variety of potato dishes. Delicious baked potatoes in foil are served with chops and ribs.

Vegetarians in Cambodia can order different variations of beans, cheese and potatoes. By the way, Khmer chefs do not skimp on cheese in their dishes, which also cannot but please two passionate cheese lovers.

If you order French fries (chips), then in some establishments they will not bring you a fried version of frozen fries, but they will cut regular potatoes with the same thin sticks. It tastes different. More homely and most importantly, it’s piping hot, real. But, not everywhere is as lucky as it is.

In the photo: French fries ($1.5) and a small portion of pork steak ($3.5)

With almost every order we receive a free vegetable salad. Slava doesn’t eat vegetables, so I get all the salad.

The rice here is also something special. Recently I asked for rice and an egg and they brought me rice that was a little peppery, but not spicy. The eggs were finely chopped, and not scattered around in bits and pieces, as was the case in some countries.

In some restaurants, the staff is so welcoming that while you are waiting for your order, they bring you free nuts with your beer and 2 baguettes with garlic. Well, that's cool. Where else can you find such generosity? Usually, when I’m waiting for an order, I eat a baguette, and then I don’t even feel like eating so much.

Amok - national Khmer dish

Amok is the national food of Cambodia. We didn't like either the meat or the fish. You can try it once for show, nothing more. Slava once ordered it, it turned out to be ordinary chicken fillet with some kind of sauce.

Food prices in Cambodia: national dish Amok costs $3

Dinner

For dinner we usually order pizza and spaghetti. Probably, thanks to European colonization, Cambodians learned to masterfully cook both.

Another of our favorite cafes is Estatic Pizza.

A small pepperoni pizza for $4 is not that small at all. We spent a long time remembering what pepperoni is

I’m even scared to imagine what will happen if I order a large pizza, they’ll probably bring a whole bowl.

My other favorite dish was spaghetti. Yes, regular pasta without anything. Once in Khmer hands, spaghetti becomes incredibly delicious. Or maybe it's just because it's Italian spaghetti.

Naked Spaghetti for $1.5

Fried rice

Also in Cambodia, you can eat various traditional Asian dishes, such as fried rice with filling: seafood, chicken, beef, pork or just vegetables.

Fried rice with vegetables

Fried rice with chicken

Cambodia food conclusions

I would like to note that all food in Cambodian restaurants is not served spicy. That is, in Cambodia it is not necessary to say know spice. If you like spicy food, then just ask the waiter about it.

Now we know for sure that the food in Cambodia is simply wonderful! I don’t know how it is in other cities, but in Sihanoukville, for example, you can eat not only very cheaply, but also very tasty. We have a real stomach holiday here. Every trip to lunch and dinner is perceived as a small holiday, because we eat in a restaurant.

For specific prices for food in Cambodia, see the following articles - (photo menu) and. As for the cafe, our average bill for two for lunch or dinner is $6-8 with drinks. If you round up to $10, then consider that for food in Cambodia you need a maximum of $30 per day for two.

Luk-Lak and Amok, which means meat and fish in Khmer respectively, are always very fresh. Less than an hour after the fish is caught, it is already cooked on your table. There is nothing surprising in this - rivers and canals are everywhere in Cambodia, so getting from water to table is a completely familiar principle that does not cause difficulties.
Meat is consumed here less often than fish, and dishes made from this product have a look quite familiar to Europeans. For example, there is an analogue of naval pasta - “lok lak” (noodles with stewed meat and egg).

But the range of fish dishes is impressive:

Samla-machu-banle - sour soup with fish:
Nom tray - baked fish with rice:
Dtray-aing - fried fish:
Dtrai-chorm-khoy - steamed.

This is not a complete list of dishes. In addition, a variety of fish sauces and pastes are prepared.

Noodles

This is the second most popular product, after rice, which is added to a lot of different dishes. From soups to main dishes as a side dish or key ingredient. The variety of types of noodles in Cambodia allows you to create many culinary masterpieces:

Rice;
Starchy;
Barley;
White;
Brown;
Golden;
Glass.

Noodle soups are often the centerpiece of the table and are served over an open fire, so this dish will be hot and bubbling for the rest of the meal.

Exotic

To visit Cambodia and not try dishes from this category at least once means not to learn anything about Khmer cuisine. This is where the local population does not deny themselves anything. There is no living creature that they would not eat. Snakes, cockroaches, spiders, crabs, crayfish, caterpillars, grasshoppers, frogs....
There is more than enough of this on restaurant menus. The only exception is snakes - Cambodian law prohibits serving this exotic animal in restaurants, since the huge number of tourists eager to try unusual things really threatens the entire cold-blooded species. But you can still find such dishes from local chefs.
Basically, eat at Cambodia restaurant not very expensive. Despite the ingenuity of the chefs and the wide variety of curiosities, lunch is unlikely to cost more than $15. And the average snack costs up to $8 per person.
In addition, tourists can visit the local market or supermarket, where they will find products that are quite familiar to them at “ridiculous” prices.

Beverages

The most common soft drinks in Cambodia are freshly squeezed bamboo juice and green tea, of course, without sugar. They perfectly tone and cool the body on a hot day. That is why these drinks are served literally on every corner. In restaurants, tea is served throughout the meal, since the amino acids it contains perfectly break down fatty foods.
Local beer is very popular. True, it is expensive at 2 dollars per bottle. The production of this drink is intended mainly for tourists, as it perfectly quenches thirst and saves from the heat.
The local population prefers palm wine, which can even be poisonous for tourists, since the body of an unadapted person does not have enough bacteria to digest this miracle drink.
When visiting Cambodia, be sure to try:

Samrong is an excellent local tincture;
Tentnot - palm tree sap;
Tekdong - coconut milk;
Dtyuk-roll - egg yolk with fruit and sugar.

Seasonings

Cambodian cuisine is quite spicy, but if you ask, they will make you a European version of the dish (less peppery). Local food is very spicy and mostly has a sweetish taste. In addition, aesthetes will be pleasantly pleased with the design of the local dishes.

The main food of the Khmers is rice, meat, fish, vegetables and herbs. The meat they eat here is chicken, pork, beef and goat. Vegetables are eaten at different stages of their ripeness, raw, pickled and pickled. The south of the country will delight seafood lovers. Locals prepare many different dishes from the ingredients presented, especially soups. For example, octopus is added to the classic Khmer soup in Sihanoukville. It costs about $2-$2.5.

Advice: it is better to boil all the water that you plan to use for drinking, making ice or brushing your teeth.

National dishes of Cambodia that are worth trying

Cambodian cuisine is very diverse, so you should try the following dishes to appreciate its taste:

Drinks of Cambodia

Among the local drinks, the following are especially popular:

Food prices in Cambodia

Cambodia has very cheap seafood, especially shrimp and squid. If you plan to stay in this country for a long time and want to cook yourself, here are the prices for some products in Cambodia:

• beef - $5/kg;
• pork - $4/kg;
• shrimp - $5/kg;
• bread - $1 per loaf;
• milk - $1.5 per liter package.

The average price for a ready-made dish is $1-$3. You can have a full lunch for $5, and for two - for $8.

For strong stomachs

Those who like to try exotic cuisine can feast on spiders, snakes, frogs, cockroaches, grasshoppers, turtles, insect larvae and even sparrows in Cambodia. Tarantulas are best prepared here in the town of Squaon, where they are seasoned with garlic and hot pepper. The price of one spider is $0.2.

Subtleties of Cambodian cuisine. What is a must-try?

2058 0

Another specific Cambodian dish is “Happy Pizza”. The basis is ordinary pizza, to which a special ingredient is added - hallucinogenic mushrooms or marijuana. You can try this pizza in Siem Reap, Phnom Penh, and Sihanoukville.

And you can wash down all this pleasure with a cocktail of snake blood and moonshine, which is sometimes served with a snake’s still beating heart as an appetizer.

Food in tourist cities of Cambodia

Siem Reaper has many restaurants and street cafes. Here you will have the opportunity to snack on national dishes, hamburgers, and pizza. Authentic Khmer food is best prepared at karaoke restaurants. You can have a drink on the famous PubStreet. The only drawback of local establishments is that not all have menus in English.

In Sihanoukville you can find establishments serving all cuisines of the world. For example, on Victory Beach there is a SnakeHouse run by Russians. Prices here are not the cheapest - the average bill will be at least $15. This restaurant has its own small zoo.

There are endless cafes and food stalls lined along Ochheuteal Beach. You can enjoy seafood here for $4. And at Serendipity Beach there are often Happy Hours, when you can buy a cocktail for $2-$2.5, and local beer for $0.5-$0.75.