Open the jar and the fragrance is the first surprise: the aroma of the freshly grated coconut, curry leaves and the ground herbs, all the tropical flavours out of a jar! Then the texture: soft, slightly chewy strands of freshly grated coconut, flecked with red chilli and fragrant with curry leaves. It isn't a smooth paste or a runny relish, it's moist, savoury and full of body, with a sharp lift of lime and a chilli warmth that's present but never overpowering.
You don't need to be cooking a Sri Lankan feast to reach for it, this is an everyday jar. Spread it on hot buttered toast, spoon it over a fried or soft-boiled egg, or fold it through scrambled eggs at breakfast. Later in the day, treat it like a chutney or a pesto: in a cheese or chicken sandwich, alongside cold meats, stirred through plain rice, spooned over roasted vegetables, grilled fish or avocado, or simply scooped up with crackers and flatbread and soft cheese.
Almost three-quarters of a whole coconut goes into every jar, which is why it tastes so fresh and generous. We make it to a traditional recipe, in small batches, by our team in Sri Lanka, and it's a Great Taste Award winner, praised by judges for its authentic flavour and the balance of chilli heat against the natural sweetness of coconut.
Usage Information
In colder months, the coconut tends to dry out and the appearance could be quite dry, dish out just enough for one serving and give it a short 5 second blast on microwave to loosen the coconut and release the aromas.
Always remember to use a dry spoon, and after serving close tight and store in a refrigerator.
Suitable for home freezing - If you don’t plan to use the entire content within 2 weeks, store portion sizes in freezer bags and freeze. When ready to use either let it thaw naturally in the fridge or microwave for 30 seconds to a minute to bring it back to room temperature.
WHAT IS RED COCONUT SAMBOL?
This is Sri Lanka’s popular ‘Pol Sambol. Pol means coconut in Sinhala, one of Sri Lanka's two official languages, and pol sambol is the island's best-loved everyday condiment. For generations it has been made fresh each morning in homes across the country, the coconut grated by hand and ground together with chilli, lime and salt on the flat grinding stone found in almost every Sri Lankan kitchen.
It belongs to a wider family of Sri Lankan sambols, condiments built by pounding or mixing fresh and dried ingredients together. But unlike the wet sambals of Malaysia and Indonesia, pol sambol is drier and more textured, built on a coconut base rather than a chilli paste. At the Sri Lankan table it's considered as essential as salt, served from breakfast to dinner alongside bread, hoppers, string hoppers, pittu and rice and curry.
To taste it is to taste something at the very centre of Sri Lankan home cooking, and a doorway into a cuisine of remarkable depth, where coconut, chilli, curry leaves and spices come together in ways quite unlike anywhere else in South Asia. We'd love you to explore it with us.
