Dish

Saraman Curry

Rich coconut beef curry with roasted spices and peanuts, associated with Cambodia's Muslim communities.

Beef saraman curry with peanuts and potato, with rice and bread, a river and a mosque behind
Illustration inspired by a Cham community kitchen in Phnom Penh.

Saraman curry (ការីសារ៉ាម៉ាន់, kari saraman) is a rich coconut beef curry with roasted spices and peanuts, tied to Cambodia's Muslim communities.[1][2] In Khmer script the name is សារ៉ាម៉ាន់, written saraman, saramann or cari saramann in English, and beef saraman is saraman sach ko (សារ៉ាម៉ាន់សាច់គោ).[3]

Cultural context

Grantourismo ranks it as the richest and most complex curry in Cambodian cooking, and CNN Travel's Lina Goldberg calls it one of Cambodia's most complicated dishes.[1][2] For a long time Cambodians have used cari for a curry, a heavily spiced dish with the body of a stew or soup, and saraman is one of them.[4]

The curry is a dish for special occasions.[2] Most Cham observe Islamic practice, including not eating pork, so beef features heavily in Cham cooking, and saraman is one of the few Cambodian curries built on beef.[5][4] The curry also takes a long time to make.[2] A family might cook it for a wedding, a religious holiday or a community gathering.[3] Cambodia's Cham Muslim communities consider it their dish, and they have long counted it among their signature festive dishes.[2][3] Served family-style, it comes with rice, a soup, vegetables and perhaps a salad.[2]

Ingredients and preparation

Saraman is a coconut-based beef curry. A typical paste, as in Grantourismo's recipe, pounds dry-roasted coriander seeds, cumin, star anise, cloves, cardamom and cinnamon with dried chilies, lemongrass, shallots, garlic, galangal, kaffir lime zest and coriander root.[2] Dry-roasted grated coconut goes into the paste and tamarind water into the simmering curry, and peanuts are cooked in the sauce and scattered on top.[2][6] The paste is close to Thai Massaman paste, but saraman stands apart in its use of star anise, roasted peanuts, dry-roasted grated coconut and at times turmeric.[2] The dry-roasted coconut gives the curry its thick, rich gravy.[2] Compared with everyday Khmer curries, saraman takes more roasting of spices, longer simmering, and more coconut cream and peanuts.[3]

A recipe from the Siem Reap restaurant Cuisine Wat Damnak, supplied by Chef Joannès Rivière, uses beef cheeks or shanks, cuts suited to long cooking that also give a rich broth for the sauce.[5] The beef is seared in oil, then cooked with fresh coconut water, fish sauce, palm sugar, galangal, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, star anise and cassia bark.[5] The covered pot starts at 270 °C (518 °F) until it bubbles, then cooks at 170 °C (338 °F) for up to four hours, until the meat is tender.[5] The beef is lifted out, chilled and sliced, and the strained broth becomes the base of the sauce.[5] The curry paste of turmeric, galangal, garlic, kaffir lime peel, lemongrass and hot chilies is blended or ground, then cooked with prahok (ប្រហុក), roasted ground star anise and cassia, dried chili paste and the beef stock before the coconut cream goes in.[5] The sauce is blended and strained. A paste of roasted peanuts and toasted coconut is blended in to deepen it.[5] Pumpkin is steamed or roasted on its own, then warmed with the sliced beef in the sauce, which is not allowed to boil.[5] The dish is finished with toasted coconut, toasted peanuts and fried shallots.[5]

Grantourismo's recipe, adapted from Sorey Long and Kanika Linden's book Authentic Cambodian Recipes, from Mother to Daughter, dry-roasts the whole spices, grinds them, and pounds in the roasted coconut and fresh ingredients one by one, hardest first.[2] Shrimp paste is roasted in a banana leaf or foil before it goes into the paste.[2] The cubed beef is browned, the paste is cooked with coconut cream, and the beef simmers in the sauce for at least two hours. After the first hour, the cook adds palm sugar, fish sauce, tamarind water and the peanuts.[2] The curry is served with steamed rice, pickled vegetables or a baguette.[2]

History and origins

Cuisine Wat Damnak says the recipe comes from the Cham, an Islamic ethnic community in Cambodia.[5] Grantourismo ties the curry to Cham Muslim communities and writes that they consider it their dish.[2] In Khmer, the word Cham has often served as a loose umbrella term for Muslim communities, including Cham, Malay and Javanese people, which makes a single origin hard to trace.[3] In Cambodia, Cham is the usual name for all Muslims, whatever their ethnic group.[7]

The royal cookbook of Princess Rasmi Sobhana Norodom includes the dish as Somlor Saraman Chvea, or Javanese Saraman, a name that points to a perceived Javanese connection.[3] Grantourismo calls saraman a cousin of Thai Massaman curry and Malaysian beef rendang, and the dry-roasted coconut is one feature it shares with rendang.[2]

The word saraman has no obvious meaning in modern Khmer, and there is no firm agreement on what it means.[3] Some food historians suggest the name may come from a similar-sounding ethnic name, shaped along Khmer or Malay lines.[3] Modern writers link it more broadly to the Malay and Indonesian family of Muslim curries.[3] Cambodia sat on sea and land trade routes between South Asia, the Malay world and China. Saraman uses cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and star anise, spices not typical of older local Khmer cooking, and they reflect those long-distance links.[3] Wonders of Cambodia suggests the curry may have been refined and codified at the royal court.[3]

Regional and household variations

Cooks differ on the fermented base. Older Cambodian cooks interviewed by Grantourismo insist that true saraman uses prahok, the fermented fish paste, not shrimp paste, which they link to Thai cooking.[2] Yet the modern Cambodian cookbooks Grantourismo consulted all call for shrimp paste, and the Cham, historically fishing people of the coast, lake and rivers, use it.[2] Narin Seng Jameson, a Khmer-American chef and cookbook author, calls the paste Indian-style and the dish "Salman curry"; she uses shrimp paste and adds powdered dried caraway seed, also called Persian cumin.[2] Chef Jo Rivieres leaves shrimp paste out entirely, saying it is not part of Khmer cuisine.[2] At Cuisine Wat Damnak, Chef Rivière prefers the taste of prahok, although the older Khmer Muslim woman who showed him the recipe used shrimp paste.[5]

The curry is sometimes made with turmeric.[2] In Battambang it is made with goat, bought from Muslim communities that raise and butcher the animals themselves.[2] Cuisine Wat Damnak prefers pumpkin as the vegetable for the dish, and greens may be served on the side with a bowl of rice.[5] Its beef can be cooked a day ahead, and it is cooled before slicing so the pieces hold their shape when reheated.[5] Cassia bark is common in Cambodia, and cinnamon does the same job elsewhere.[5] The amount of each paste ingredient varies with the cook's taste; Chef Rivière uses roughly one part turmeric to four parts galangal, and about one kaffir lime for every 300 to 400 grams (11 to 14 ounces) of galangal.[5]

Chef Chanthy Yen, owner of Touk, published a version with Global News on September 6, 2026. It braises 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of boneless beef short ribs with red curry paste, cashews, cinnamon, cloves, star anise, makrut lime leaves, coconut cream, fish sauce, palm sugar, beef broth and cubed kabocha squash for two to two and a half hours, and serves it over jasmine rice or rice noodles.[8]

Preparations and recipes

References 8
  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 CNN Travel, Lina Goldberg, 30 Cambodian foods every visitor needs to try (December 9, 2019)
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16 2.17 2.18 2.19 2.20 2.21 Grantourismo Travels, Saraman Curry Recipe for the Cambodian Curry Cari Saramann (November 11, 2014)
  3. ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 Wonders of Cambodia, Saraman Beef Curry (March 30, 2026)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Grantourismo Travels, Best Curry Recipes from Southeast Asia, South Africa and more (June 26, 2025)
  5. ↑ 5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.10 5.11 5.12 5.13 5.14 Move to Cambodia, Recipes from the Cuisine Wat Damnak kitchen: Beef saraman curry with pumpkin (February 27, 2015)
  6. ↑ CamboKitchen, Beef tamarind & roasted peanut curry (Kari Saraman) (March 11, 2014)
  7. ↑ European Institute for Asian Studies, Federico Sabeone, Islam in Cambodia: The fate of the Cham Muslims (June 2017)
  8. ↑ Global News, Recipe: Cambodian saraman curry (September 6, 2026)
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This page was last edited on 27 October 2026, at 04:38.