Layering herbs on a plate of blue rice
When you lift the lid of the rice cooker, the butterfly pea flowers you set beside the white rice have turned the grains a deep blue. Flake grilled fish over it, pile on finely shredded vegetables, and scatter toasted coconut. A little fish sauce dressing goes on last, and against the calm look of the plate, sourness, saltiness, heat and the green smell of herbs start to move through your mouth in turn.
Nasi kerabu is a rice dish long enjoyed in Kelantan and Terengganu on the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia. In cultural documentation, the "kerabu" in Nasi Kerabu is also a word for the practice of mixing herbs and raw vegetables together. The rice is colored blue with butterfly pea flowers, and served with fish or chicken, crackers, a salted egg, coconut sambal and more. So copying only the blue color does not give you the way nasi kerabu is eaten, bite by bite.
The first stumbling block for readers is probably not whether to buy butterfly pea flowers, but that it is hard to see what to pair with the blue rice to settle the flavor. The answer is not to treat the herbs as a single garnish, but to layer, in small amounts, the savoriness of fish, the roundness of coconut, the saltiness of fish sauce and the sourness of lime on one plate. The star is not the blue rice but the structure of the plate that receives it.
It is described as a Kelantan dish, but the color of the rice, the herbs, the fish and the sauce all change from home to home and stall to stall. For cooking at home, rather than borrowing the local name and fixing the ingredients, separating what to protect from what to replace keeps your sense of the flavor. The ingredient table and the state of each step follow that line.
Adapting the ingredients to a home kitchen
Nasi kerabu (serves 4)
Butterfly pea flowers, pandan leaves, makrut lime leaves and tamarind are ingredients to look for at an Asian grocery or online. But you do not need to give up the whole dish for lack of butterfly pea flowers. Even if you return the blue to plain white rice, as long as the combination of herbs, grilled fish, coconut sambal and sourness remains, the character of the plate holds. Conversely, if you prioritize the blue color and leave out the herbs or the sauce, it may look close but the taste drifts toward a different dish.
Thinking about budu and fish sauce separately
Budu is a strongly salty sauce made by fermenting small fish, and it is a seasoning hard to leave out when talking about Kelantan's nasi kerabu. Thai fish sauce (nam pla) also has the savoriness and salt of fish, but it is not the same thing. In this recipe, considering the availability and the strong smell of budu, we use 30 ml of fish sauce and shape the outline with sourness and sweetness. If you want the fermented aroma to lead, look for budu; if you want something to reuse in other Southeast Asian cooking, choosing fish sauce makes the decision easier.
If you buy a bottle, the points to check are the size and the ingredient list. Buying makes sense if you plan to use it in Thai or Vietnamese cooking as well as nasi kerabu and can decide where to keep it once opened. If it is only for this one plate, use the fish sauce you already have or a small pack, and accept the difference in aroma as a "substitute for cooking outside Malaysia."
Method
Run the six steps together, and the sambal and garnishes come together while the rice cooker runs. Using aroma, thickness and the state of the center of the fish as your signals, rather than the color of the rice, makes it easy to correct even if the ingredients differ.
Tips for keeping the flavor's axis
The role of the butterfly pea flower is, first of all, to change the color of the rice. If you add too many flowers trying to strengthen the aroma, the infusion becomes harder to handle and you only increase the ingredients without changing the flavor's axis. The first time, make the blue with 8 g, and adjust the depth from the next time.
Do not try to replace the herbs with a single kind of leaf; choose by which of bitterness, coolness and crunch you want to keep. Mint gives a cold fragrance, myoga a light heat, and cabbage the moisture and bite. If you can find daun kesum or Vietnamese coriander, it moves closer to the local aroma, but combining 2–3 herbs from nearby also gives the plate dimension.
Finish the fish sauce dressing not in the pot, but decide the saltiness after turning off the heat. Water evaporates while it simmers, so if you add more fish sauce from the start, you can't bring the saltiness back. Move water, lime and sugar by 5 ml or 5 g at a time, and adjust to a thickness that runs in a thin stream from the back of a spoon.
If you want to keep the texture of the sambal coarse, a stone mortar helps. A food processor makes it smooth and easy to eat, but the feeling of fish and coconut grains on the tongue gets weaker. The one thing to check when buying is whether the granite mortar and pestle come as a set. Buying one suits people who will keep making sambal, curry pastes and crushed aromatics. If you only try it this once, substitute a heavy bowl and the back of a spoon and accept a slightly less fine grain.
Landing on the home table with substitutes
Buy the blue, or go back to white rice
Dried butterfly pea flowers are worth choosing when you want to put the surprise of blue color on the table. If you are making it only once, want to check the combination of herbs and fish first, or don't want leftover blue ingredients, it is fine to start with white rice. For yellow, dissolve 2 g of turmeric in water, taking care that the aroma doesn't get too strong. Even if the color differs, not leaving out the accompanying sauce and herbs brings the taste closer.
How much of the budu aroma to keep
If you find budu, don't replace the full 30 ml of fish sauce, but start with 20 ml. Check the fermented aroma and saltiness, and add 5 ml at a time if needed. When you make it only with fish sauce, make the lime and chile a little stronger and round off the corners of the saltiness. Showing this difference openly turns not having the local seasoning from a failure into a branch in the flavor.
Replacing the fish with chicken or beans
If you don't eat fish, cook 250 g of chicken thigh skin side down and heat it to 74°C at the center. For a plant-based version, grill 200 g of thick fried tofu or 200 g of tempeh, leave out the fish sauce, fish and fish crackers, and adjust with salt, lime and mushroom soy sauce. This departs from the example of nasi kerabu and is a home arrangement, but it stands as a plate that receives herbs and coconut. If you use shrimp crackers, check the label for crustaceans as well as fish.
Origins in Kelantan, regional differences and what the plate carries
Nasi kerabu is not a dish with one finished form to memorize. Malaysian public cultural documents list it as a dish of Kelantan, Terengganu and elsewhere on the east coast of the peninsula, citing rice colored with butterfly pea flowers, herbs, sambal, fish or chicken, crackers and salted eggs. Because of that range, you can replace ingredients and still not lose the center of the dish.
Kelantan is close to southern Thailand, and is a region where Thai and Siamese influence on the cooking is pointed out. The sourness, heat, sweetness and the saltiness of fermented fish living together on one plate make sense when seen as a food culture that crosses borders. However, lumping nasi kerabu together as "Thai blue rice" hides both the kerabu idea of mixing herbs and the structure of serving fish and sauce separately.
An oral record about a Kelantan restaurant preserves how a locally loved nasi kerabu came to be known inside and outside Kelantan. The home plate, the local shop and the memories travelers carry back make the dish not a fixed regional specialty but a table that moves. When you make a plate yourself, rather than ending with blue rice at the center of the photo, adding the chopped herbs last and serving the fish and sambal separately leaves room for that movement.
The interest of the dish is not in making everything taste the same. The first bite is fish and sauce, the second herbs and lime, the third toasted coconut and rice. Because the eater can change the combination, conversation continues at the table even with rice of an unfamiliar color.
To compare Malaysia's staples from another angle, move on to nasi lemak, coconut milk rice served with sambal, laksa, which brings seafood and noodles together with sourness, and roti canai, the dough that is slapped and griddled at morning stalls, and the differences between regions and staples become easier to see.
Frequently asked questions
Is it a failure if the blue is pale?
If the color is only pale, it is not a failure. The color changes with the amount of flowers, the steeping time and the type of rice, so judge after tasting. Next time, steep the infusion 5 minutes longer, or go back to white rice and keep the amounts of herbs and sauce, which is more reproducible. If you add acid early, it turns from blue to purple, but it is still edible.
Can I make it with ordinary short-grain rice?
Yes. Because it is stickier than long-grain rice, it is important to drain the washed rice in a colander for 10 minutes and not increase the cooking liquid. If the bottom is damp when it finishes, open the lid, turn it with a paddle, switch off the warming and let steam escape for 5 minutes. If you reduce the water next time, reduce it by only 10 ml at a time.
Are budu and fish sauce the same?
No. Budu is a fermented fish sauce and tends to bring a strong aroma and saltiness. Fish sauce is a substitute that adds the savoriness and salt of fish, and combined with lime, chile and sugar it comes together with a different outline. When choosing a product, check not only the size but also the ingredient label and how to store it after opening.
Can I make it ahead?
Divide the rice, grilled fish, sauce, herbs and fish crackers into separate airtight containers and refrigerate within 2 hours of cooking as a guide. Pat the herbs dry and use them the same day, and finish the fish and rice by the next day. When eating again, heat the fish and rice thoroughly to the center and check for 74°C, the leftover guideline in food safety references. Do not eat anything left at room temperature for a long time, or anything with a change in smell or stickiness.
I'm worried about allergies to shrimp crackers and fish sauce.
Fish sauce, budu and fish crackers can contain fish or crustaceans. For salted eggs, check for egg; for coconut milk and coconut, check each product's ingredient label and production line. Check the ingredients and allergen labels every time, and if you can't avoid cross-contact on the same utensils, don't force a substitute.
Sources
The position of the dish, the ingredients and the cooking temperatures discussed here were checked by opening the following sources on 5 August 2026. The regional differences of the dish and the home substitutes are editorial judgments made in moving the structure found in these sources into a home kitchen.
- Nasi Kerabu Kelantan (National Department for Culture and Arts Malaysia, JKKN) (checked for the region of nasi kerabu, butterfly pea flowers, herbs, sambal and steps. Accessed and checked: 5 August 2026)
- Quaker Cookbook Malaysia 2020 (Nutrition Society of Malaysia) (checked for ingredient composition, coconut sambal, herbs and plating. Accessed and checked: 5 August 2026)
- Safe Minimum Internal Temperatures (FoodSafety.gov) (checked for core temperatures of fish, eggs, chicken and leftovers. Accessed and checked: 5 August 2026)
- Traditional Nasi Kerabu Business at Pasir Pekan, Kelantan (UiTM Institutional Repository) (checked for records on a Kelantan restaurant and its spread beyond the region. Accessed and checked: 5 August 2026)
- Malaysian Food by Region (Tours Malaysia) (supplementary check of the composition of the Kelantan plate, the place of budu and east-coast food culture. Accessed and checked: 5 August 2026)
