What Is Pol Roti?
Pol roti is a Sri Lanken coconut flatbread. Pol means “coconut” in Sinhala, one of the official languages of Sri Lanka. Pol roti is made using wheat or flour mixed with grated fresh coconut. Sometimes, pol roti recipes include ingredients like chiles and onions for a more savory dish.
Pol roti is enjoyed throughout the day in Sri Lanka. It’s common to find the flatbread in market stalls, especially during breakfast. In this video, you’ll learn how pol roti is enjoyed and how to make it yourself.
How to Make Pol Roti
Ready to make pol roti at home? Here are the ingredients and instructions you’ll need to make your own coconut flatbreads. Watch the video above to see the process, step-by-step.
Ingredients for Pol Roti
4 cups all-purpose flour, divided
1 2/3 cups shredded unsweetened coconut
1 ¼ tsp. sea salt
1 medium red onion, finely chopped
3 green chiles or one 4-oz. can chopped green chiles (optional)
½ cup water
½ cup coconut milk
Oil for greasing
Instructions for Pol Roti
Mix 3 ½ cups flour with coconut, salt, onion and chiles.
Slowly stir in the water and coconut milk. Add remaining flour until a smooth dough forms. Shape into a ball.
Cover and rest at room temperature 4-12 hours.
Cut into 8 pieces. Roll each into a ball, then, on a floured surface, flatten into a disc about ¼ inch thick. Keep covered so they don’t dry out.
Cook in a lightly greased skillet over medium to medium-high heat, 2-3 minutes per side until brown spots appear.
Enjoy warm or at room temperature. Bohoma hondai (that’s delicious in Sinhala)!
Read the Full Video Transcript: Pol Roti Recipe
This transcript reflects the spoken content of the video and is provided for accessibility and reference.
Hey guys, today we're cooking pol roti. This is a Sri Lankan coconut flatbread. Pol in Sinhala actually means coconut and in Sri Lanka, this is one of the best street foods out there. You can have it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, a snack. Honestly, there's no bad time for it.
So, with that, let's get to cooking. This dish is just going to take a few ingredients, including some coconut flakes, green chiles. This is optional if you like a little spice to it. Coconut milk, flour and onions. We're going to get started by first mixing in a bowl the flour, the coconut, salt and the chiles. And then in a separate bowl, we're going to add our water and our coconut milk.
So, we'll mix all that together. And then we are going to very slowly add the liquid mixture to the dry ingredients, stirring this as you pour it in until it's completely mixed into a smooth dough. We're going to shape this into a ball. We're going to wrap this with some plastic wrap and let it sit for at least 4 hours and up to 12 hours.
So, since I wait for that, not ready to clean all this quite yet. Do you know this fun fact about Sri Lanka? Sri Lanka has the highest density of wild elephants of any other country on this earth. And not just elephants, they have leopards, sloth bears, blue whales and all of the just off the coast of this one island that's the size of, wait for it, West Virginia. They call it the Pearl of the Ocean. And once you'll see it, you'll totally get why.
Once the dough has rested, we're going to flour little workstation here. You're going to take your dough and we're going to cut it into six little pieces. We're going to take our individual pieces, roll them up into these little balls to help flatten them. And then we want to roll them out into maybe 1/2 in thick pieces. And you want to make sure that you keep each of your pieces covered in between so they don't dry out.
We placed a roti in the pan, making sure they're not stuck together. And so, you're gonna get them nice and brown like this on both sides. And then when you're done, we just repeat. Did you know that Sri Lanka is one of the top coconut producers in the world, so it makes sense why coconut is in so many of their foods. A very on brand recipe to try.
All right. Well, there you have it. Sri Lankan pol roti. You can enjoy this dish warm or at room temperature. Like I said before, it could be breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack to anytime meal. So, whenever you decide to give it a try, let us know what you think in the comments below.
Thanks for watching, and we'll leave you with this last did you know. Did you know that Compassion International has actually been working in Sri Lanka specifically for over 13 years, serving nearly 25,000 children in poverty? If you want to learn more about what that looks like, we'll drop the link in the description for you. Thanks for watching again. We'll see you in the next video.