Best Asian Breakfast Dishes from our Recipe Archives

Our recipes for the best Asian breakfast dishes include Japanese rice bowls topped with eggs, marbled Chinese tea eggs soaked in tea, classic Singaporean and Malaysian kopitiam half-boiled eggs, puffy Thai omelettes, spicy Indonesian egg curries, and lots more. We’re sharing the best of our best Asian egg recipes, Asian omelette recipes, breakfast rice recipes, and breakfast noodle recipes.

Our recipes for the best Asian breakfast dishes make some of the world’s best breakfast dishes as far as we’re concerned. We’ve lived in Southeast Asia for 15 years and we absolutely adore breakfast in Asia, whether it’s a plate of fried rice topped with soft jammy eggs, juicy meatballs swimming in an aromatic noodle soup, or soft scrambled eggs with smoky char siu barbecue pork.

Our best Asian breakfast recipes include our best breakfast rice recipes and breakfast noodle recipes, some of which are topped with a soft-boiled egg or fried egg (because everything’s better with a fried egg on top), and our best Asian eggs recipes and best Asian omelette recipes, which are some of our best breakfast recipes from my Weekend Eggs recipe series.

Now before I share our best Asian breakfast dishes, we have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is reader supported. If you’ve enjoyed our recipes, please consider supporting Grantourismo by supporting our epic Cambodian cuisine history and cookbook on Patreon; or buying a handcrafted KROK, the best mortar and pestle ever; booking a cooking class or meal with locals on EatWith; or buying something on Amazon, such as these cookbooks for culinary travellers, classic cookbooks for serious cooks, or gifts for Asian food lovers and picnic lovers.

If you don’t find cooking inspo in this compilation, do browse our recipe archives, which are brimming with 15 years of recipes we’ve cooked, created and collected around the world, from places we’ve lived, worked, travelled, and loved since we launched Grantourismo in 2010 with our yearlong global grand tour dedicated to slow, local and experiential travel. Now let’s tell you all about our best Asian breakfast dishes.

Best Asian Breakfast Dishes – Recipes for Breakfast Noodles, Soups, Rice and Egg Dishes

Our best Asian breakfast dishes is a collection of our best compilations from our Weekend Eggs recipe series and our Grantourismo archives and includes our best Asian breakfast noodle recipes, best breakfast rice recipes, best Asian egg recipes, and best Asian omelette recipes.

Best Breakfast Noodle Recipes from Asia – Khao Soi, Curry Laksa, Bun Cha and More

Topping our list of best Asian breakfast dishes is this collection of our best breakfast noodle recipes from Asia, which includes recipes for everything from creamy spice-laden coconut milk-based broths to clear noodle soups topped with prawns, pork and plenty of fresh fragrant herbs.

There’s Cambodia’s nom banh chok from Siem Reap, kuy teav Phnom Penh from the capital, Chiang Mai khao soi from northern Thailand, Indonesia’s soto ayam, which we became smitten with in Yogyakarta, Vietnam’s bun cha Hanoi, Singapore curry laksa, and more.

It’s also worth noting that eating habits have changed in Asia. Some of the noodle soups would only have been eaten for breakfast once upon a time, such as nom banh chok and kuy teav, but these days they’re eaten any time of the day or night.

This post came about after an American friend who was recently here on holidays in Cambodia commented that “They don’t really eat breakfast in Southeast Asia, do they?” After a few weeks in Thailand and Cambodia, he was missing breakfast from home, such as a proper Eggs Benedict.

Asians do eat breakfast, including eggs (see our best Asian egg recipes, below), just not breakfast as our friend knows it. Breakfast in Siem Reap is a real delight actually. Along with the noodle dishes I mentioned, there’s everything from smoky grilled pork with rice to beef lok lak with fried egg.

The thing is that you have to get up early to eat breakfast on the streets with the locals here in Cambodia, as well as neighbouring Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar, where the streets are liveliest soon after sunrise. The other thing is that locals eat anything at any time of day. Indeed, a snack of sweet desserts before a savoury dinner is normal. I’m not complaining!

Best Breakfast Noodle Recipes from Asia – Khao Soi, Curry Laksa, Bun Cha and More

 

Best Breakfast Rice Recipes for Congee, Rice Soups and Rice Porridges

Next on our list of best Asian breakfast dishes is this collection of best breakfast rice recipes for congees, rice soups and rice porridges, although the same could be said of these as the breakfast noodle dishes, above. They’re not only eaten for breakfast these days.

Stroll by the Siem Reap riverside food carts in the evening and you’ll see locals buying everything from borbor, Cambodia’s congee, to nom banhchok, fresh rice noodles doused in a fish curry-like broth, both very traditional breakfast noodle dishes.

I compiled this collection of our best breakfast rice recipes for our long-running series Weekend Eggs, as many of these breakfast rice dishes have an egg component – whether it’s a rice porridge topped with soft jammy eggs or an omelette on a donburi or Japanese rice bowl.

I’ve also included breakfast rice recipes that don’t necessarily call for an egg – as in the case of Cambodian pork and rice where a fried egg is optional – but are much improved by sliding on a soft fried egg with runny yolk or popping a jammy boiled egg on top.

Rice is a staple here in Southeast Asia and the wider region, traditionally eaten at least three times a day. While outside Asia rice is often considered a side dish, here rice is at the centre of a shared family-style meal, and everything else is its accompaniment.

For individual single-bowl meals, such as breakfast, along with workers lunches, market snacks and street food meals, rice is often the main event, particularly with dishes such as rice soups, rice porridges and fried rice, all of which can be eaten for breakfast, brunch, lunch, a snack, dinner or supper.

If you’re a rice lover like me, you might also be interested in my project Make Rice Not War, A Celebration of Rice Diversity to Inspire Curiosity and Connection and this guide to How to Cook Rice Around the World: 66 Rice Dishes by 65 Rice Lovers.

Best Breakfast Rice Recipes for Congee, Rice Soups and Rice Porridges for Weekend Eggs

 

Best Asian Egg Recipes for Breakfast and Brunch – and Lunch, Snacks and Dinner

Our compilation of our best Asian egg recipes for breakfast and brunch, and lunch, snacks and dinner is next on our list of best Asian breakfast dishes, and it includes everything from Japanese egg donburi recipes, a Thai son-in-law eggs recipe, Indonesian boiled egg curries, and a Chinese tea eggs recipe for marbled eggs steeped in an aromatic stock of tea, spices and soy.

This collection doesn’t include all our Asian eggs recipes, just a selection of some of my favourites, such as a katsudon recipe for a crunchy Japanese pork cutlet cooked in eggs and spring onions, served atop a bowl of rice and sprinkled with slices of scallions, to another donburi (rice bowl) recipe for oyakodon, a Japanese chicken and egg rice bowl made from eggs, spring onions and chicken simmered in dashi.

I’ve also included recipes for egg bhurji, a delicious classic Indian spicy scrambled eggs with a little twist courtesy of a different scrambled egg technique, and an akuri recipe for Parsi style scrambled eggs with tomato, coriander and green chillies.

Best Asian Egg Recipes for Breakfast, Brunch, Lunch and Dinner from Weekend Eggs

 

Best Asian Omelette Recipes from Egg Foo Young to Kai Yat Say

Our round-up of best Asian omelette recipes is next on our list of collections of best Asian breakfast dishes and includes everything from the classic Chinese egg foo young recipe for a crispy Cantonese omelette traditionally filled with char siu pork, spring onions and bean sprouts to Thailand’s kai yat say recipe for a popular Thai omelette stuffed with minced pork and vegetables.

We’ve also got recipes for the soft, fluffy Japanese rolled omelette called tamagoyaki, which is fantastic on a tamago sando or Japanese egg sandwich, and kai jeow, a spectacular Thai omelette that puffs up and results in a crispy golden-brown omelette, and is fantastic with fish sauce and steamed rice.

Note that a key factor that can affect the outcome of some of these Asian omelette recipes is your heat source. We recommend a seasoned carbon steel wok for some Asian omelettes, such as egg foo young. If you’re making this in the wok over gas, your burner’s size, and whether it has an inner and outer ring, can affect the amount of heat reaching different parts of the wok.

If you don’t have gas, then the next best wok is a round bottomed wok, which is perfect for omelettes such as kai jeow as you need to get under the omelette with a wide mesh skimmer. Note that it takes real confidence in your kitchen skills to make omelettes like kai jeow, as you need to stay calm while flipping this omelette over. Do wear closed footwear and a kitchen apron.

A good thermometer is also essential, because if the oil temperature is lower than 190°C / 375°F, you’ll be making a soggy mess of an omelette. A sheet pan with rack covered in kitchen towels is handy for the finished omelettes and we use a fish slice for shaping and flipping, as tongs can break up your omelette when you’re flipping it over.

Best Asian Omelette Recipes from Egg Foo Young to Kai Yat Say for Weekend Eggs

 

Please do let us know if you make any of our best Asian breakfast dishes in the comments below, as we’d love to know how they turn out for you.