Onion Sambal – Sri Lankan Side Dish

Onion Sambal is one of my favourite side dishes from Sri Lanka. This dish is great when served with rice and curry, in lump rice, with roties, roast paan and toasts.

With a recipe like this one, you can make many other different varieties of dishes. Want to learn the recipe? Keep reading to find out how…

Did You Know that Onions are the….

• Oldest food to the human race.
• Ancient Egyptians once worshipped onions.
• It’s used as a powerful medicine in Ayurveda.
• Onions came from a bulb family. Because the important bulb part of the onions grows underground.
• All onions do grow underground.
• There are about 27 kinds of onions out there.
• Low in calories.
• Consists of over 90% of water.
• Onions do really make you cry.
• Cut the onions under cold running water or splash some white vinegar on the cutting board to minimize the crying.
• While onions are healthy for humans, it’s not safe for some animals including cats and dogs.

Did you know, you can get rid of onion breath by eating some parsley? and there are so much more to onions than I ever knew.

Onions are the most used vegetable in my kitchen. I use them to cook, grill, caramelize, bake, or slice them raw for my salad. There are endless ways to enjoy onions. One of which is The Onion Sambal.

I learned to make onion sambal from my mom. She learned it from her family. When she made them back in the day, I would surreptitiously grab a piece of bread and dip it into the sambal while the onions are still sizzling on the stovetop and sneakily eat and escape without her ever noticing me there. Those were the days!

During one of my food cravings, I wanted to learn to cook this dish. After many trials and errors, I learned to get the flavours just right to please my taste palate. Then I’ve made this dish like hundreds of more times, playing with other ingredients to make a variety of other dishes using this same recipe.

How It’s Made

To be honest, the worst part of making this sambal is the slicing. Onions do make you cry. Some use special kitchen gadgets to slice their onions. But you still cry. All I need is a sharp knife and the rest is history.

It’s important to slice the onions thinly… to me anyway. The thicker the onions the more you will have to let it cook and the more oil you will have to use. My mom likes to cook it longer with a medium thickness in the onion slice using a lot of oil. She drains the oil towards the end and the sambal comes out great.

I learned to avoid excessive oil and minimized the cooking time by cutting the onions thinly. But some do like their onions thicker so its all on your own cooking preferences.

Use the same recipe for other varieties

Have you tried store-bought lime pickle? I use lime pickle right out of the jar to serve with my biriyani. However, I also use this store-bought lime pickle with raw onions to make Lime Pickle Sambal.

There is an easy way to create another dish using the lime pickle and this recipe. Add about a tbsp of the store-bought lime pickle towards the very end of your cooking to enhance the flavour even more. Best to serve with ghee rice.

Another way to make use of this onion sambal is if you remove the banana pepper and add more of the Maldives fish. The sambal now becomes Maldives fish onion sambal.

Another dish you can try is by adding fish. Removing both banana pepper and Maldives fish you may add a can of tuna or sardine to make fish sambal. I use it often to fill in my pastries.

Why not eggs? I usually wait until the onions are done then I part it to one side of the pan. Break open an egg on the other side of the pan, scramble them and completely cook before mixing it all together with the onions. Give it a try. The sambal pairs so well with toasts or roti. Best meal idea for breakfast.

If the above options sound boring, you should try adding pre-cooked or fried anchovies (Anchovies Sambal), beef (Beef Sambal), chicken, lamb, or mutton instead of the banana peppers and the Maldives fish. See how that turns out.

Finger-licking delicious!

When adding meat to this onion sambal, you can serve with just about any of your meals. Besides rice and curry, toasts and roties, think lump rice, ghee rice, pittu, string hoppers, plain or egg hoppers, and noodles. The list keeps going.

There are countless ways to cook onions. My favourite is the onion sambal, all because I often use this recipe to create other dishes. Satisfies my sambal cravings plus a chance to impress my family. Try it yourself. Cook like a pro and impress everyone around you.

If you decide to post your food pictures on social media, tag @iberrychik I’m on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. 

PS

• You can accelerate the cooking process by not using a lid when cooking and raising the heat to medium or higher. It’s fine as long as you are keeping an eye on it and as long as your constantly stirring so it doesn’t burn the onions on the bottom.
• If at any point while cooking, the sambal looks too dry, smokes up too much or burns the bottom of the pan, try lowering the heat, adding a little bit of oil and keep stirring to avoid further burning.
• If your sambal looks too oily after cooking, drain the onion sambal using a pasta drainer. This will take a 10-15min to really drain any excess oil out.

I listed about 9 different ways you can turn this basic onion recipe into a varies of other tasty dishes.

What would you like to serve this sambal with? Do you prefer the basic recipe or the one with meat in them? Comment below and let me know if you were able to impress your family.

One last thing…

Check out my other recipes too

For more awesome recipes like this one, take a look at our category HERE. Choose from many curries, sambals, snacks and desserts to satisfy your food cravings.

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