Must try in Sri Lanka

Sri Lankan Hoppers.

Name: Sri Lankan Hoppers (Appa, Bowl-Shaped Coconut Pancakes)
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 7 h 45 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Sri Lanka
Ingredients: 300 g rice flour; 1 tsp instant yeast; 1 tbsp sugar; 250 ml warm water; 400 ml full-fat coconut milk, at room temperature; 1 tsp fine salt; ¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda; 4 eggs, one per egg hopper; 3 tbsp coconut oil, for wiping the pan; to taste salt and coarsely ground black pepper, for the egg hoppers

Appa, Bowl-Shaped Coconut Pancakes

ආප්ප · say it: AHP-pah

A hopper is a bowl you can eat. Fermented rice-flour and coconut-milk batter is poured into a small deep round pan and swirled fast so it climbs the sides, then covered and cooked until the thin rim turns crisp, brown-edged and full of holes while the pool in the middle stays soft, faintly sour and slightly spongy. Eaten plain it tastes gently of coconut and yeast; its real job is to be torn apart and used as a scoop for pol sambol, seeni sambol and lentil or fish curry. Crack an egg into the centre while it cooks and you have the egg hopper, which is breakfast and hangover food across the island in equal measure.

Jump to the recipe

Read the story

Appa, Bowl-Shaped Coconut Pancakes

Gate: Sri LankaIsland-wide
Prep: 15 min
Cook: 30 min
Total time: 7 hr 45 min incl. 7 hr rest
Serves: 4
Status: Medium
Nutrition / serving · estimated: Calories 390 kcal; Protein 10 g; Carbs 53 g; Fat 16 g; Fiber 2 g; Sugar 4 g; Sodium 430 mg

Why this recipe works.

Batter ratio tuned for ordinary rice flour and canned coconut milk rather than freshly ground rice and palm toddy.
Explains the swirl and the exact texture cues, so you know why hopper one fails and hopper four does not.
Fermentation timings for both a warm kitchen and a cold one, instead of a single unhelpful "leave overnight".
Covers plain, egg and milk hoppers from the same bowl of batter, which is how a Sri Lankan kitchen actually serves them.

Tips from our kitchen.

Batter consistency decides everything: it should be like thin pouring cream, coating a spoon and running straight off. Too thick and it will not climb the pan; too thin and the centre never sets.
Ferment until the batter is domed, visibly bubbly and smells yeasty with a faint sourness — 6 to 8 hours in a warm kitchen, up to 12 in a cold one. Time is a guide, the smell is the test.
Do not stir the fermented batter hard before use. Fold it gently once; knocking out all the bubbles gives flat, tough hoppers.
Swirl within three seconds of pouring. The batter starts setting on contact, and once it grips the pan you cannot spread it any further.
Season a carbon-steel or cast-iron pan properly and wipe it with oil between hoppers. A sticking hopper tears at the rim and comes out in pieces.
Eat them the minute they leave the pan. A hopper that has sat for ten minutes goes soft and leathery at the rim, and no amount of reheating brings the crispness back.

Substitutions.

Instant yeast → 120 ml palm toddy, or 2 tbsp cooked rice blended into the batter: Toddy is the traditional raising agent and gives a rounder sourness. Blended cooked rice feeds a wild fermentation instead and takes longer, but it is closer in character than yeast alone.
Rice flour → 300 g raw short-grain rice, soaked 4 hours and ground with the coconut milk to a smooth batter: The original method. Freshly ground rice gives a slightly silkier hopper, but you need a strong blender and the difference is smaller than the effort suggests.
Appachatti hopper pan → A small carbon-steel wok, a deep 18 cm non-stick frying pan, or a Chinese-style bowl-shaped omelette pan, each with a lid: Any pan with curved sides and a tight lid works. Straight-sided frying pans give you a pancake, not a hopper.

Variations.

Bittara appa (egg hopper): An egg cracked into the middle as soon as the batter is swirled, then covered so the white sets and the yolk stays liquid. Salt and pepper go over it at the table.
Kiri appa (milk hopper): A spoonful of thick coconut cream poured into the centre partway through cooking, giving a rich, almost custardy middle. Usually eaten with jaggery or treacle rather than curry.
Pani appa (honey hopper): A sweet hopper finished with kithul treacle and grated jaggery in the well — served as an evening sweet rather than with sambols.

Storage & reheating.

Cooked hoppers do not keep — they are crisp for a few minutes and leathery after twenty, and reheating does not rescue them. The batter, however, keeps well: refrigerate it for up to 2 days once fermented, which actually deepens the sour note, and let it come back to room temperature and loosen with a splash of coconut milk or water before cooking. Never freeze the batter; the fermentation dies and the hoppers come out flat. If you are cooking for a group, make the batter the day before and cook to order at the table, which is exactly how it is done in a hopper shop.

Serve with

Pol sambol, seeni sambol and a bowl of kiri hodi or dhal curry, with an extra egg hopper for anyone who wants one.

The story behind Sri Lankan Hoppers.

Hoppers belong to the same family as the South Indian appam, and the shared name gives the relationship away: appa in Sinhala, appam in Tamil and Malayalam. Both are fermented rice batters cooked in a small round pan, and both are eaten at either end of the day rather than at lunch. Where Sri Lanka took the idea somewhere of its own is in what surrounds it — a hopper arrives with pol sambol, seeni sambol, kiri hodi and often a curry, so the bread is only ever half the plate.

Traditionally the fermentation was not done with baker's yeast at all. Cooks used toddy, the naturally fermenting sap tapped from coconut or kithul palms, which brought both the lift and a specific mild sourness that bakers still argue cannot be exactly reproduced. As toddy became harder to buy in cities, home batters moved to yeast, and some cooks now use a spoon of cooked rice or a splash of coconut water to push the flavour back towards the old version. The honest position is that yeast gives a very good hopper and toddy gives a slightly more interesting one.

The hopper is also a piece of daily infrastructure. Hopper shops open in the evening rather than the morning, and in many towns a queue forms around six o'clock for hoppers cooked to order and carried home in newspaper before they lose their crispness — they have a shelf life measured in minutes, which is why they are almost never sold ready-made. The pan matters too: the appachatti is a small, deep, thin-walled bowl with two handles, made so the cook can grab it and rotate the batter in one motion. Its shape is what makes a hopper a hopper. A small carbon-steel wok with a lid is the practical stand-in, and once you have made three or four you will get the swirl right; the first one is traditionally the cook's own, because it never comes out well.

Questions, answered.

Why is my hopper batter not rising?

Usually temperature or dead yeast. Fermentation stalls below about 20°C, so in a cold kitchen put the covered bowl in an oven with only the light on, or near a warm appliance. Check the yeast is in date, and make sure the coconut milk and water were warm rather than hot when mixed, since liquid above roughly 50°C kills yeast on contact.

Why does the batter not stick to the sides of the pan?

Either the pan is not hot enough or you waited too long to swirl. The batter must hit a hot surface so it grips instantly, and the rotation has to happen within about three seconds of pouring. If the batter simply runs back down into a puddle, it is also probably too thin — whisk in a tablespoon or two of rice flour and try again.

Can I make hoppers without a special hopper pan?

Yes. Any small pan with curved sides and a lid will do — a carbon-steel wok, a bowl-shaped omelette pan, or a deep 18 cm non-stick frying pan. What you cannot use is a straight-sided pan, because there is nothing for the batter to climb and you will end up with a rice pancake rather than a bowl.

Are hoppers gluten-free and vegan?

Plain hoppers are naturally gluten-free, since they are made from rice flour and coconut milk with no wheat at all, and they are vegan as long as you skip the egg version. Egg hoppers obviously are not vegan, and if you are cooking for coeliacs check that your rice flour is milled in a gluten-free facility.

When do Sri Lankans actually eat hoppers?

Mostly at breakfast and at dinner, rarely for lunch, which is rice and curry territory. Many hopper shops only open in the evening and sell them freshly cooked to take home. They are considered a light meal rather than a snack, and a normal portion is two or three plain hoppers plus one egg hopper with sambols.

All recipes →