Wet-da hin — Bamar pork-and-mango-pickle curry, slow-simmered with turmeric, garlic, ginger. Sour-savory backbone, eaten with rice.
Bamar everyday curry — pork is the default Bamar meat (Buddhist majority, no Hindu beef taboo, no Muslim pork taboo within the community). Mango-pickle (thanaphet) addition is documented in upper-Burma cookbooks from the 1930s.
MiMi Aye's 2019 'Mandalay' calls wet-da hin the dish that 'every Bamar grandmother fights about.' Yangon's Min Lan restaurant lists three pork curries — Mandalay-style, Yangon-style, and 'oily,' the customer's choice.
Glossy red-brown oil on top, tender pork-belly chunks, gravy thin but flavor-dense. Sour from green-mango pickle, savory from fish sauce, mild heat from dried chili. Served with plain rice and a wedge of lime.
Pork belly is browned in turmeric oil first, then the onion-garlic-ginger paste is cooked down until fragrant, then mango pickle and water added for the simmer. The 'oil-on-top' (si-pyan) finish is the Bamar mark of a curry done right.
Variations
Mandalay version is drier, more oil-on-top. Yangon-Bamar uses ripe-mango pickle for sweeter sour. Mon-style from Mawlamyine swaps mango for tamarind paste.
On the Palate
Where Pork Curry sits in the Burmese flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 6
How it's made
4 steps · 10 min active + 1 hour 33 min waiting
- 115 min
Salt-cure pork shoulder cubes 15 min with turmeric.
- 210 min
Sauté ginger-garlic paste in oil; add pork, brown 10 min.
Watch outLet the pork sit and take real color before stirring — a deep browned crust is where the curry's savory depth comes from, so don't crowd or fuss it.
- 33 min
Stir in 200 g pickled mango pieces + chili oil + fish sauce.
- 475 min
Simmer covered 1 hr; reduce uncovered 15 min until oil separates.
Watch outKeep reducing until a slick of red oil rises and pools on top — that oil-on-top surface is the Bamar sign the curry is finished; before it separates it's not done.
