Sambal—precisely cooked sambal—is a notably versatile and robust component in traditional Malaysian cooking. It’s the building block of many scrumptious and colorful Malay and Nyonya dishes and marries well with wide array of ingredients: seafood, tofu, eggs, and vegetables.
Once you master the skill of making a great sambal, you can prepare numerous variations of lusciously addictive sambal-laden dishes, for example: grilled fish with banana leaf, sambal eggplant, prawn sambal, or in this instance, egg sambal or sambal telur.
Sambal has the virtue of adding layers of complex flavors to any everyday ingredients; it brightens up a simple ingredient and adds zesty, piquant, and tantalizing notes to the finished dish.
Sambal telur or egg sambal is a Malay concoction. I usually fry up a huge batch of sambal in oil until it reaches the perfect texture, flavor, and consistency and then I’d store my sambal in the fridge for days or even weeks.
To make sambal telur, I’d boil some eggs and then sauté them with sambal so they are nicely coated with it. Sambal telur is a quick and easy recipe but exceptionally pleasing!
Once in a while, I’d deep fry the hard boiled eggs so the outer layer of the eggs turns golden brown and crisp. This variation of sambal telur or egg sambal tastes even finer because of the mouthfeel of the eggs. Either way, sambal telur doesn’t disappoint.
How Many Calories per Serving?
This recipe is only 262 calories per serving.
What Dishes to Serve with This Recipe?
For a wholesome meal and easy weeknight dinner, I recommend the following recipes.
Sambal Telur (Egg Sambal)
Sambal telur or egg sambal is a delicious Malaysian recipe. Combining cooked sambal with hard boiled eggs, sambal telur or egg sambal is great with rice.
Ingredients
- 4 hard boiled eggs
- 2 - 3 tablespoons sambal
Cooked Sambal:
- 6 oz. fresh red chilies (seeded and cut into small pieces
- 1 tablespoon toasted belacan Malaysian shrimp paste
- 4 oz. shallots
- 1/4 teaspoon salt or to taste
- 2 teaspoons fish sauce
- 2 1/2 teaspoons sugar/ palm sugar or to taste
- 4 tablespoons oil
- 1/2 onion cut into rings
Directions
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1
Prepare the sambal by grinding chilies, shallots, and toasted belacan in a mini food processor. Make sure the sambal paste is well blended and smooth.
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2
Heat up a wok with oil and “tumis” (sauté) the sambal paste and onion rings until aromatic or when the oil separates from the sambal paste. Add the seasonings: salt, sugar/palm sugar, and fish sauce and do a quick stir, dish out and set aside.
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3
To make sambal telur, add 2-3 tablespoons of sambal back into the wok plus peeled hard boiled eggs. Make sure the eggs are nicely coated with the sambal. Dish out and serve hot.
Recipe Notes
There are two types of sambal: raw/fresh or cooked sambal. Raw/fresh sambal is a tableside condiment, but cooked sambal is a flavoring paste used to create numerous sambal-laden dishes. Here is my raw sambal belacan recipe.
Looks similar with Indonesian “Bali Telur”… nice one, gonna try it when i go to Malay