Burmese fritters
Burmese fritters (Burmese: အကြော်; pronounced [ʔət͡ɕɔ̀]; known as a-kyaw in Burmese) are traditional fritters consisting of vegetables or seafood that have been battered and deep-fried. Assorted fritters are called a-kyaw-sone (Burmese: အကြော်စုံ). Burmese fritters are generally savory, and often use beans and pulses, similar to South Asian vada.
A plate of Burmese fritters | |
Course | Breakfast, snack (mont) |
---|---|
Place of origin | Myanmar (Burma) |
Region or state | Southeast Asia |
Associated national cuisine | Burmese |
Main ingredients | Various |
Similar dishes | Vada, tempura, pakora, okoy |
The fritters are eaten mainly at breakfast or as a snack at teatime, served at tea shops and hawker stands alike.[1] They are typically served as standalone snacks dipped in a sour-sweet tamarind-based sauce, or as toppings for common Burmese dishes. Gourd, chickpea and onion fritters are cut into small parts and eaten with mohinga, Myanmar's national dish. These fritters are also eaten with kauk hnyin baung rice and with a Burmese green sauce called chin-saw-gar (ချဉ်စော်ကား) or a-chin-yay (အချဉ်ရည်). Depending on the fritter hawker, the sauce is made from chili sauce diluted with vinegar, water, cilantro, finely diced tomatoes, garlic and onions.
Variations
Diced onions, chickpea, potatoes, a variety of leafy vegetables, brown bean paste, Burmese tofu, chayote, banana and crackling are other popular fritter ingredients. Typical Burmese fritters include:
- Bazun khwet kyaw (ပုစွန်ခွက်ကြော်) - fritters made of bean sprouts and prawns, similar to Filipino okoy[2]
- Mandalay pe kyaw (မန္တလေးပဲကြော်) - kidney bean fritters
- Mat pe kyaw (မတ်ပဲကြော်) or Mandalay baya kyaw (မန္တလေးဗယာကြော်) - black gram fritters, similar to South Indian medu vada[3]
- Mont kat kyaw (မုန့်ကပ်ကြော်) - vegetable fritters battered in rice flour[4]
- Bu thi kyaw (ဘူးသီးကြော်) - slices of fried bottle gourd
- Kyet thun kyaw (ကြက်သွန်ကြော်) - fried shallots or onions, similar to Indian pakora
- Myinkhwa ywet kyaw (မြင်းခွာရွက်ကြော်) - fried bouquets of pennywort leaves
- Mont hsi kyaw (မုန့်ဆီကြော်) - fried pancake with jaggery slices[4]
- Ngaphe kyaw (ငါးဖယ်ကြော်) - deep-fried fishcakes made from bronze featherback flesh
- Ngapyaw kyaw (ငှက်ပျောကြော်) - Banana fritters, made only with overripe bananas with no added sugar or honey
- Pe kyaw (ပဲကြော်) - fried split pea crackers that traditionally garnish mohinga
- Samuza (စမူဆာ) - deep-fried potato dumplings
- Tohu kyaw (တိုဟူးကြော်) - Burmese tofu fritters
- Yangon baya kyaw (ရန်ကုန်ဗယာကြော်) - yellow split pea fritters, similar to Indian pakora or falafel[3][5]
- Yikyakway (အီကြာကွေး) - deep-fried Chinese crullers
References
- Bush, Austin. "10 foods to try in Myanmar -- from tea leaf salad to Shan-style rice". CNN. Retrieved 2020-05-31.
- "ပုစွန်ခွက်ကြော်". Food Magazine Myanmar. Retrieved 2019-11-13.
- Aye, MiMi (2019-06-13). Mandalay: Recipes and Tales from a Burmese Kitchen. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781472959485.
- Tun, Ye Tint; IRIE, Kenji; SEIN, THAN; SHIRATA, Kazuto; TOYOHARA, Hidekazu; KIKUCHI, Fumio; FUJIMAKI, Hiroshi (2006), Diverse Utilization of Myanmar Rice with Varied Amylose Contents, Japanese Society for Tropical Agriculture, doi:10.11248/jsta1957.50.42
- Marks, C.; Thein, A. (1994). The Burmese Kitchen: Recipes from the Golden Land. M. Evans. p. 35. ISBN 978-1-59077-260-7. Retrieved November 5, 2016.