Kelantan Icon · Blue Herbed Rice
Nasi Kerabu
Photo: amrufm / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0
The rice's vivid blue color comes entirely from steeping butterfly pea flowers — the same natural pigment found in some blueberries — with no artificial dye in the traditional recipe.
Rice is steamed with butterfly pea flower petals until it turns deep blue, then piled with a tangle of raw herbs and shredded vegetables, a stuffed chilli, salted egg, fried fish, and crackers, all mixed together before eating. Kelantan market stalls and night bazaars sell it as a colorful, herb-heavy daily rice plate.
Why it's made this way: It developed among Kelantan's Peranakan community around the 15th century out of Malay, Chinese, and Thai cultural blending along the Kelantan River, and its blue color remains a specifically Kelantanese signature not found in rice dishes elsewhere in Malaysia.
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Part of World of Street Food — 3248 dishes from 118 countries.
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