Khao Lam — Bamboo Grilled Sticky Rice / ข้าวหลาม

Northern Thai and Isaan — khao lam is a traveling food, sold at roadsides; the technique reflects the practical need for a self-contained, portable cooked food that requires no plate or utensil

Khao lam is sticky rice mixed with coconut cream, palm sugar, and black beans (or sometimes taro), stuffed into green bamboo sections, and roasted slowly over charcoal until the bamboo chars and the rice inside is fully cooked and infused with the green-bamboo aroma. The charcoal heat cooks the rice from outside through the bamboo; the moisture sealed inside the bamboo steams the rice simultaneously. The bamboo imparts a subtle grassy, green-tea-like note to the coconut-sweet rice. To eat, the bamboo is split or the outside sheath is peeled away to reveal the cylindrical cooked rice inside. Khao lam is sold at roadside stalls throughout the North and Northeast.

Khao lam's genius is in the bamboo — the sweet coconut-palm sugar rice cooked in a living vessel that imparts its own flavour creates something categorically different from rice cooked in a pot.