Making the sambal tumis needs the right amount of shrimp paste since it makes a different in its taste. Too little, and your sambal tumis won’t have a zing to it, and too much, it will taste bitter. A trick I use is to add a handful of dried shrimps instead.
For the basic sambal tumis, you’ll need:
To blend – 1 garlic, 1 1/2 onions, 12 dried chillies (soaked and seeded), 2 cm shrimp paste, a handful dried shrimps
1 onion (quartered)
1 bowl tamarind juice
1 tablespoon salt
1/2 cup oil
How to make it:
In a wok, heat the oil.
Add in the blended ingredients and saute until the oil has separated.
Add the onions. Then add in the tamarind juice little by little. Let it boil. Then add the salt.
For shrimp and petai sambal tumis, add the shrimps and petai now. Let the shrimps cook a bit.
For egg sambal tumis, add in a little more water for the gravy. Add in three eggs. Do not stir until the eggs have hardened.
For chicken sambal tumis, fry the chicken first. Marinate the chicken with some salt and turmeric powder beforehand. Add in the fried chicken into the sambal tumis and stir well.
The sambal tumis is best eaten with nasi lemak.
Selamat petang,
I enjoy your recipes. Do you think I can add belimbing and petai seeds to the sambal tumis to make it tangy? And is there a difference to sambal tumis and sambal belachan?
Terima Kiseh
Hi Patrick,
Sambal tumis and sambal belacan are 2 very different things. You need to tumis the sambal tumis, with onions and etc, but you can just make the sambal belacan with the lesung….maybe i will make an entry on that soon heheh.
if you see the last picture in the entry, i did use some petai with the anchovies. it goes great with prawns too, though I have never eaten the sambal tumis with the belimbing..though perhaps i could try that one day….
salam zara. can you give us satay recipe?