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What is a Hopper? | Sri Lankan Food, Hoppers.

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What is a hopper? Hoppers are a type of pancake or noodle served commonly in Sri Lanka. String hoppers resemble a nest of noodles, plain hoppers look like bowl-shaped pancake because of the shape of the hopper pans.

Hoppers. What Are The Sri Lankan Food Hoppers
Hoppers arte a Sri Lankan pancake which can be sweet or savoury, or, there are also string hoppers. Read to find out more!

I’d read about hoppers in the Sri Lankan food section of the Lonely Planet, but until our latest month in Sri Lanka I’d never seen nor tried one. That was because my first trips to Sri Lanka were as a much richer tourist staying in fancy hotels often eating at the more expensive beach restaurants. Hoppers are a Sri Lankan dish and they come in many varieties with both string hoppers and egg hoppers being particularly popular.

To find hoppers on the island of Sri Lanka,you needed to go to the local eateries, the roti huts, and “hotels” as restaurants in Sri Lanka are often called.

These days hoppers are far easier to find, on our most recent trip we saw hoppers served on hotel buffets and cooked for us in private villas, hoppers are on the rise!  One hotel even had a live cooking station at breakfast producing plain and egg hoppers to order.

All hotels we used on that trip had string hoppers and typical curries on the breakfast buffets. 20 years ago we only saw western breakfasts.

Hoppers are cool these days and tourists seem more willing to try local food, so if you’re heading to Sri Lanka you should now have no problem finding them.

All types of hoppers were delicious meals for us, particularly with the kids. Hoppers come in different varieties, you’re bound to find the hopper for you.

Hoppers is the anglicised name commonly used in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is very anglicised generally. You may also see them on the menu as appam, string hoppers as idiyappam.

Hoppers

Hoppers come in many forms. Standard hoppers are typical Sri Lankan bowl-shaped or funnel-shaped pancakes.

String hoppers are nests of noodle-like steamed batter. They’re almost like rice noodles, to eat with curries and chutneys in place of rice.

Hoppers can be filled, you’ll see egg hoppers, vegetable hoppers and sweet hoppers. There are more examples on this page. Lets answer that question, “what is a hopper?” in full.

Plain Hoppers

What is a hopper? Hoppers Sri Lanka, part of a Sri Lankan breakfast
Plain hoppers and string hoppers as part of a delicious Sri Lankan breakfast
  • Hoppers in their simplest form are bowl-shaped pancakes made from fermented rice flour and coconut milk.
  • Cooked in small round hopper pans over a medium heat gas flame, hoppers tend to come out crispy round the edges, thicker at the bottom.  
  • Hoppers can be simply seasoned with salt and pepper or made spicy with hot fresh chili sambols.
  • They are top right in this photo of a fantastic Sri Lankan breakfast.
  • To eat hoppers you smoosh them with your fingers into the curry and sambol. I believe the technical term for Sri Lankan style eating is smooshing.  We became quite good smooshers.

Or you could ask for a knife and fork, nobody will mind.

Hoppers – What are They Served With?

Sri Lankan hoppers are most often served with curries and spicy chutneys. However, hoppers can also be a sweet dish, served with yoghurt (curd) and palm syrup.

Hoppers With Egg – Egg Hoppers

Hoppers Sri Lanka. Egg Hopper
Sri Lankan egg hoppers

Egg hoppers are simply a plain hopper with an egg cracked in the bottom. We only really saw these in the evening. Sri Lankan food tends to run to a timetable, you can’t always get the same food all day.

Sri Lankan Food Guide. What is a hopper? egg hoppers, plain hoppers, string hoppers and sweet hoppers, they're all good and the next big thing in pancakes.

We made this pin for you to bookmark to Pinterest. Thanks.

I like my egg hoppers spiced up with some fresh coconut (pol) sambol as below, the children like theirs with cheese.

Look out for road-side hopper huts with their rows of tiny round pans, take them home or eat in.

Hoppers With Vegetables, Filled Hoppers

egg and vegetable hopper
Hopper cooking in Ella . Egg and vegtable.

Hoppers can come with all sorts of fillings.

These are vegetable and egg hoppers at The Roti Hut, Ella Sri Lanka. Our favourite place to eat, on the main street in Ella. They cost almost nothing.

egg and vegetable hopper 1
My kids loved Sri Lankan food, particularly hoppers.

The finished dish. I was really happy to feed the boys these hoppers, some good nutrition going on there, and nothing too spicy.

Cheese and egg hoppers were good, too.

Curd and Trickle Hoppers

Hoppers Sri Lanka. Desert with curd and trickle.
Sri Lankan hoppers can be desert too, here with curd and “trickle”

A special treat. Curd is fresh buffalo yoghurt, or sometimes cow.  Small road-side stores sell the curd in terracotta pots wrapped in leaves or newspaper all over Sri Lanka.

Trickle (aka treacle or honey) is coconut palm syrup, it has a lovely smokey flavour.

String Hoppers

Sri Lankan hoppers string hoppers
String hoppers, another breakfast time hopper, with dahl and pol sambol.

Idiyappam or string hoppers are the things that look like nests of spaghetti in this breakfast picture. To make string hoppers Sri Lankans mix red or white roasted rice flour with warm or hot water to make a dough, then push it through a sieve or press to make the strands.

The individual little matted nests then go into a steamer. You will find string hopper moulds, mats, and steamers to buy online.

String hopper makers are widely available in Sri Lanka,  in the UK you can buy one on Amazon, (for USA click here).
.

Making String Hoppers. Sri Lankan Food
Making string hoppers in Sri Lanka

String hoppers are an essential part of a Sri Lankan breakfast. They are very good for smooshing into the curries and sambols.

String hoppers can also be served with curries at dinner as they were at the luxurious Max Wadiya villa. The private Chef there, Ranjan, gave us a string hopper making master-class (above).

Now you know all about hoppers! They’re nothing fancy, but tasty and great for kids, we’re marking them up as one of our food highlights from around the world. If somebody asks you “What is a hopper?” just tell them they’re a Sri Lankan pancake.

More Videos, Sri Lanka & Sri Lankan Food, Foodie Travel!

We created multiple posts and videos that should be interesting to you, as a lover of food in Sri Lanka and foodie travel. Find them here.

If you want to make string hoppers at home, you’ll need an Idiyappam maker (a noodle maker is just as good) some Idiyappam flour (buy online here) and, of course, an Idiyappam recipe. Just click through for all 3. My husband, Chef, has created information-packed blog posts about these.  So now you know what a hopper is, back to our main Sri Lanka Travel Blog page for everything you need to know about this fabulous country as a travel destination. More on Sri Lankan food here.

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Kalhari

Saturday 2nd of September 2023

Nice article about hoppers. In addition to egg and plain hoppers, Now there are new hoppers like Cheese and chilli hoppers and Nutella hoppers. See the photos here.

Nick

Monday 3rd of February 2020

Mmmm,Hoppers is my best choice.. Lets talk about the next most popular Sri lankan street food dish "Koththu".. Shredded Rotti bread , chopped up on a grill with egg , vegetables and any meat in it...its with not only flavor or color there is music in it too..: )..

Alyson for World Travel Family

Monday 3rd of February 2020

Kottu Roti is good indeed and the noise very distinctive.

Sheli

Friday 8th of April 2016

I'm a huge fan of hoppers!But,I've never tasted curd and trickle hoppers and filled hoppers!They look sooo yummy!Can't wait to try them by my own.Thanks for sharing!

Rohan de Silva

Wednesday 10th of September 2014

It's not "trickle," that's the way they pronounce, treacle, as in a sweet syrup. Sri Lankan yogurt is made from buffalo milk, so it has a richer taste, that's the way we like our "curds," with treacle on it.

alyson@worldtravelfamily

Wednesday 10th of September 2014

And very good it is too! It does actually say that in the post Rohan.

nyrina

Wednesday 8th of January 2014

well...i am on my way there... >>>>>>>colombo, nuwara elliya

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