Mainland Southeast Asia · Volume 42, The Tea Leaf, the Curry Oil and the Caravan Road

Mohinga

Name: Mohinga
Total time: 2 h
Yield: Serves 4 to 6
Cuisine: The Golden Triangle
Ingredients: 300g catfish, whole where possible; as available lemongrass, turmeric, ginger, for poaching; 1.5 litres water; 100g banana stem, young, sliced; 75 to 100g roasted rice powder or chickpea flour; for garnish fish sauce, dried chilli flakes, boiled egg, coriander, to garnish; 1 bundle per bowl rice vermicelli

Bamar dry zone and delta

Mohinga, Myanmar's national fish and rice noodle soup, thickened with chickpea flour and banana stem: a shallow bowl of pale golden, lightly thickened fish broth over soft rice vermicelli, flakes of catfish and pale slices of banana stem visible in the liquid.

An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.

Time: 2 hours

Researched: 12 sources cited
Reviewed: Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
Cooked: Not yet cooked and reported

Over fifteen regional varieties of mohinga exist, Yangon, Pathein, Mandalay and Shan versions named among them, and it is eaten around the clock, at funerals and celebrations alike.

by Bamar dry zone and delta

Mohinga's earliest textual trace is Konbaung-period, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: the poet U Pu references mont hin, the poet U Min uses mont ti. Burmese Wikipedia, citing the researcher Dr Khin Maung Nyunt, notes something genuinely telling: mohinga's method does not appear in royal palace cookery records at all. It was common people's food, not court cuisine, and its history is correspondingly harder to pin down than a dish the palace bothered to write about. Ngapi itself has firmer early evidence: a Mon stone inscription dated to the first century CE, and ngapi-makers listed by name in Burmese inscriptions from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, traded for rubies, benzoin and musk. This chapter treats the deeper archaeological inference, that rice-noodle and fermented-fish cooking may run back to the Pyu era, as a plausible but unproven extension of that record, not as settled fact.

Read the history

As tradition built it

Serves 4 to 6. About 2 hours.

Ingredients

300g catfish, whole where possible
as available lemongrass, turmeric, ginger, for poaching
1.5 litres water
100g banana stem, young, sliced
75 to 100g roasted rice powder or chickpea flour
for garnish fish sauce, dried chilli flakes, boiled egg, coriander, to garnish
1 bundle per bowl rice vermicelli

Method

Poach the whole catfish gently in the water with lemongrass, turmeric and ginger until just cooked. Lift out the fish, flake the flesh, and reserve.
Return the bones, head and skin to the pot and simmer a further hour. This second stage is what actually builds the stock's body: a single poach gives you cooked fish, not a proper broth.
Strain the stock, discard the bones. Add the banana stem, simmer until tender but not disintegrating.
Whisk the roasted rice powder or chickpea flour into a little cold stock to make a smooth slurry, then stir this gradually into the simmering pot until the broth thickens.
Return the flaked fish to the pot, season with fish sauce.
Serve over rice vermicelli, garnished with dried chilli flakes, boiled egg, coriander and a squeeze of lime.

What a modern chef changes

The two-stage stock respected as the actual technique, and the oil-break rule applied to the aromatics before the fish goes in

Rung 1

Method

Sweat the lemongrass, turmeric and ginger in a little oil first, watching for the oil to visibly separate, before adding the fish to poach. This is the same hsibyan discipline this chapter uses for a Bamar curry base, applied here to a broth rather than a sauce, and it builds real depth before the fish is even in the pot.
Do not skip the bones-and-skin second stage. A stock that stops after poaching the flesh is thinner and less gelatinous than the tradition intends; give the second simmer its full hour.
Use the thinnest rice vermicelli available, not standard pad Thai noodles. Mohinga's texture depends on a noodle delicate enough to carry the thickened broth without fighting it.

Open in the atlas: cook mode, scaling and tick off lists