Burmese chicken curry with bamboo and tomatoes

Burmese curry, it’s not our most popular sauce but it’s one we can’t stop making. It’ll never quite get the same attention as it’s neighbouring cuisines from India or Thailand. But Burmese curry does a very good job at giving you the best of both. With lots of earthy and warming Indian spices in the background, then plenty of lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves for a fresh zing, it’s a very versatile sauce. You could easily swap the chicken in this recipe for pork, prawns or fish.

In all honesty, we often overlook the Burmese curry at home. Not today though. It’s getting a bit of dressing up and it’s coming out to party. In Burmese cooking you will often find curries contain shrimp paste, just like Thai curry. Spicymonkey Burmese curry doesn’t contain shrimp paste though – it helps us keep things available for those who don’t eat fish/crustaceans.

Today though, we used shrimp paste and fish sauce to give the final dish that bit more authenticity. And it was delicious. Go careful with the shrimp paste, using too much can completely overpower all the other flavours. We’ve done that a few times before!

We also went with some other ingredients found at a Chinese/Thai food shop, bamboo shoots and fresh green peppercorns. Extra bite and crunch is always welcome.

Plain boiled rice will be great with this curry. Jasmine rice would be even better.

This recipe should be enough for 4 people, it really depends how hungry you are!

What you need

1 pouch Spicymonkey Burmese curry

2 tbsp vegetable oil (or a few squirts of spray oil)

4 chicken breasts

4 tomatoes – cut into quarters

few spoonful of bamboo shoots

fresh green peppercorns (or preserved)

1 tsp shrimp paste

What to do

In a large pan/wok, on the lowest heat, gently fry the shrimp paste until it softens and becomes pungent.

Add the diced chicken and stir to coat in the shrimp paste. Continue to fry gently for a few minutes.

Pour in all the sauce from the pouch. Bring it to the boil and then simmer on low heat.

Add the bamboo shoots, tomatoes and green peppercorns. Stir these in and continue to simmer until the sauce has thickened up a bit.

Serve with rice/naan breads or anything else you might fancy.

You can find the Burmese curry here: –

Burmese curry sauce (medium)