SINGAPORE, Aug 2 — Just about a week to National Day, the culinary pride of some Singaporeans has been offended by an online post featuring a dish called “Singaporean rice” involving ketchup, mayonnaise, rice, noodles and a hodgepodge of other ingredients.
On Sunday (July 31), a Reddit user named “u/best-mango-YT”, who appears not to be Singaporean or to live here, started a thread titled Homemade Singaporean Rice! about the dish, which seems to have its origins in Pakistan.
The post, featuring a picture of the homemade Singaporean rice dish, set off a firestorm of reactions ranging from shock to horror, indignation and amusement.
As of yesterday, the post on r/Rice, a forum for rice enthusiasts to discuss rice and post pictures of rice dishes, had received 55 per cent negative votes from Redditors.
The recipe that came from Pakistan recipe website, Food Fusion, is a blend of stir fried vegetable, egg noodles and white rice, topped with chicken in ketchup and mayo.
The recipe also suggested “hot sauce, ketchup and little water” to be added to the ginger garlic chicken gravy.
To assemble the multi-layered dish, a layer of rice is added to a “layer of stir fried vegetables with noodles” and completed with a “third layer of chicken gravy”.
The dish is topped with a blend of mayo, ketchup and hot sauce, fried garlic and green chilli.
The dish has clearly touched a nerve of some Singaporean Reddit users on r/Rice.
One said: “I’ve seen nothing like this in Singapore. For that matter, I’ve never heard of a dish with both noodles and rice.” Another asked fellow Singaporeans to calm down: “Dear Singaporeans! It’s just the name of a dish OP (original poster) cooked. No need to get upset! Our national pride isn’t made of tissue paper.”
Others responded with satire. “Singaporean here, checking in to say this is 100 per cent our national dish, which we all eat three times a day, in coordinated fashion, to the national anthem (except lunch, when we eat along to the national pledge instead) daily.”
On the r/Singapore subreddit, a repost of the Homemade Singaporean Rice! thread had received 174 comments as of yesterday.
One user, summing up the reaction of many Singaporeans there, said: “My ancestors and descendants cried looking at that.” A couple of comments pointed out that the origin of “Singaporean rice” has nothing to do with Singapore.
As it turns out, the Pakistani dish was deliberately given a “fancy” and “exotic” name to intrigue the wedding crowds in Karachi, Pakistan, the website Recipe52.com said.
Singaporean rice is a famous Pakistani fusion food, writes food blogger Mariam Sodawater. The fusion dish inspired by Manchurian, Russian and Burmese cuisine is typically served with tomato corn soup, she explained.
Phew, at least someone got to the bottom of this mayo ketchup noodle rice mystery. — TODAY
