Grilled Banana – Khmer Snack

Chek Ang – Grilled Banana

Banana is among the most popular local fruits in Cambodia. Beside eating as fruit in raw, bananas are cooked in many forms to create varieties of Khmer delicious banana snacks.

Grilled banana we called Chek Ang in Khmer (ចេកអាំង), is selling widely on the streets of Phnom Penh city. We can have a skewer of hot grilled bananas just for 500 Riels. The local people like to have grilled banana as snack between lunch and dinner time.

There are two kinds of grilled banana, one is soft and another one is not too soft, but it doesn’t mean crispy. The mature banana (the skin still looks green) was grilled, then it will not become soft, but the taste is sweeter. For the riper banana, it will become soft after grilled, and the taste become a bit sour sometimes.

Chek Namva – kind of banana used for grilled and also for cooking of other Khmer snacks

Wanna grill banana is easy. The kind of banana that we use to grilled is call Chek Namva (ចេកណាំវ៉ា). Firstly, taking the skin off, put it into a skewer of 4-5 using a bamboo stick. Then put it under the sunlight for about 30mn, after that can put it on to the coals. The coals shouldn’t be too much, because the bananas need some times to be best grilled. If we are too hurry, the inside of the bananas could be uncooked while the outside part get burned. While grilling, we must keep turning the bananas often and also apply salty water on it. The salty water (just a little bit of salt into water) is used to keep the banana not become very dry after grilled, and salt helps increase the sweet taste of banana.