Dish
Samlor Korko
សម្លកកូរ
Thick Cambodian vegetable and meat soup thickened with roasted ground rice and seasoned with prahok and green kroeung.
Samlor korko (សម្លកកូរ, samlor korko) is a thick Cambodian soup of vegetables, fish and meat, thickened with roasted ground rice.[1] Its name means "stirring soup," and its flavor rests on prahok and green kroeung.[1]
Cultural context
Samlor korko is a traditional soup and is considered one of Cambodia's national dishes.[1] CNN Travel gives it a stronger claim than amok to being the true national dish.[2] It is served in restaurants, at roadside stands and in family homes.[2] Once a royal dish that could hold up to 100 ingredients, it is now eaten widely as a rich comfort meal, often at family lunches.[3] Roadside vendors may sell it cheaply, and middle-class families may cook it as a nourishing meal for their children.[3]
It is usually eaten for lunch or dinner with steamed jasmine rice, and it is especially linked with older Cambodians.[4] When it is served family style, the host ladles the soup into bowls, serving elders first, and leaves the pot in the center of the table.[4] It is often made as a shared dish for family and community meals. Cambodianess counts the work of pounding the kroeung and simmering the pot as a way to connect with Cambodian heritage.[5] Because of its thick, vegetable-rich form, it has been compared with French ratatouille and pot-au-feu, and it is also known as Cambodian ratatouille.[1][6]
The fish in the soup reflects the place of the Tonle Sap lake and the Mekong River in Cambodian food and in the lives of the communities along them.[3] Prahok ties the soup to the wider Cambodian use of fermented fish as a base flavor.[3] Moringa leaves, called mrum in Khmer, are regarded as essential to the dish.[3]
The MHOPe project of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung in Phnom Penh took samlor korko as its starting point for talking about Cambodia's food systems, nutrition and food security, and how food travels from farm to household.[7] Made with Chef Nak, its video series follows women as they cook their own versions of the soup, telling their stories and their part in putting a nourishing meal on the table each day.[7][3] The project's logo shows turmeric, moringa, fish, green papaya and rice.[7]
Ingredients and preparation
Samlor, also written samlaw, samlar or samla, means soup or stew, and korko refers to stirring the pot. Cambodian cookbooks spell the name in many ways, including samlor korkor, samlor koko and samlaw kako.[4] The soup always contains prahok and kroeung and often holds more than a dozen vegetables.[2] It is most often made with catfish and pork belly.[2]
The base is green kroeung, an herb and spice paste made here with both the stalks and the green leaves of lemongrass.[4] The paste commonly combines lemongrass, galangal, makrut lime, turmeric, garlic and shallots.[5] Some recipes brown these aromatics before pounding them, which deepens their savory flavor.[6] Prahok, the Cambodian fermented fish paste, is stirred hard into water, and the solids are mashed and the bones and stringy pieces removed before it goes into the pot. Fish sauce is the closest stand-in when prahok is not available.[4]
Roasted ground rice thickens the broth and gives it texture.[4] Cambodian cooks usually make it from home-grown long-grain jasmine rice, not sticky rice. The rice is soaked, drained, dry-roasted until golden, cooled and ground to a coarse powder.[4] The same roasted rice powder is called Angkor Ling.[7]
In the usual method, the kroeung is pounded by hand in a mortar or blended, then fried in oil. The protein and vegetables go in next, followed by water or broth, the seasonings and the toasted rice.[5] The pot simmers gently so the flavors blend while the vegetables keep their shape.[5] Common vegetables include green papaya, long beans, eggplant, pumpkin, bamboo shoots and leafy greens.[5] Proteins may be pork, chicken, fish or freshwater prawns, and the soup may be seasoned with fish sauce, palm sugar and sometimes tamarind.[5] Holy basil, coriander and sawtooth coriander are the usual garnishes.[5] Samlor korko is served hot, most often with rice, though it can also be eaten on its own.[5]
History and origins
Samlor korko is believed to be a very old dish, dating to the Khmer Empire.[4] Cambodianess traces its origins to the Angkorian period, centuries ago.[5] Cambodians have eaten it for hundreds of years.[2] It was once cooked for weddings, religious ceremonies and harvest festivals, and over time it became an everyday meal.[5]
The story
The soup appears in the Khmer folk legend "Young black lady's magic formula for a love charm" (មន្តស្នេហ៍ស្រីខ្មៅ).[1] In it, a young crown prince named Guj Monoraj is lost while hunting and is nursed back to health by an elderly couple and their daughter, Neang Khmao (នាងខ្មៅ). There he tastes a soup that seems to hold every vegetable, which the family calls the "soup of a hundred ingredients" (samlor muoy roy mouk).[1] The prince later brings his parents back to taste it. Three cooks prepare the soup and stir it the whole time it cooks.[1] The king finds it good but lacking something, so he adds toasted rice and declares it perfect. He then names it the "stirred soup," since everyone kept stirring it, and it has been called samlor korko ever since.[1]
Hardship and change
Under the Khmer Rouge, in Democratic Kampuchea (1975 to 1979), Cambodians used samlor korko to make the most of scarce food. Its ingredients could be swapped without losing its flavor, which made it practical in hard times.[5] In recent years, vegetarian versions with tofu and versions with coconut milk have appeared, and the soup has become better known abroad as interest in Cambodian food has grown.[5]
Regional and household variations
Samlor korko is cooked in many ways, depending on its purpose and on the means of the cook and the family.[3] In middle- and upper-class homes it is a thick soup, close to a stew, sometimes made with stock simmered for hours. In poorer villages it is much lighter, made with water, and leftovers may be stretched with more water.[4] It is a flexible dish, made with whatever seasonal produce the household has, so the mix of local vegetables changes through the year.[4] Traditionally the vegetables are whatever the farm has to offer.[7]
Traditional recipes pair pork or chicken with catfish, and for most older Cambodian cooks a version without catfish is not samlor korko.[4] Younger Cambodian chefs often use only one protein. Restaurants in Siem Reap may use ocean fish in place of river fish and serve lighter versions finished at the table.[4] Other cooks swap the catfish for another fish.[4] Longteine De Monteiro's The Elephant Walk Cookbook (1998) suggests Cornish hen, free-range chicken or quail in place of the traditional catfish.[1] Some versions add coconut milk for creaminess.[3]
Preparations and recipes
- 196 Flavors
- Cambodian stirred soup of meat and mixed vegetables seasoned with Khmer curry paste and prahok and thickened with ground roasted rice.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Wikipedia, Samlar kako
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 CNN Travel, 30 Cambodian foods every visitor needs to try (December 10, 2019)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 Heinrich Böll Stiftung Phnom Penh, Series of videos with Chef Nak
- ↑ 4.00 4.01 4.02 4.03 4.04 4.05 4.06 4.07 4.08 4.09 4.10 4.11 4.12 Grantourismo Travels, Samlor Korko Recipe: How to Make Cambodian Stirring Pot Soup (May 18, 2020)
- ↑ 5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.10 5.11 Cambodianess, Samlor Korko: A Traditional Cambodian Soup (March 30, 2026)
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 196 Flavors, Samlor Kako
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 Heinrich Böll Stiftung Phnom Penh, About MHOPe