With its subtle flavour and compact packaging, kralan seems like a simple but satisfying snack, but making it is a laborious process for those who stake their livelihoods on it.
The snack consists of sticky rice cooked in coconut milk, with black-eyed peas or beans stuffed and cooked inside a bamboo tube.
Kratie province is most famous for kralan but it’s along a stretch of road that straddles Sotr Nikum and Prasat Brakong districts along National Road 6 where vendors are most visible. That’s where Phoey Phorn, 37, operates the largest stand, which he has run with his wife, Phai Bopha, for the past decade.
“My wife’s family had sold kralan far before I married her and carried on the business,” Phorn said. “Many people are buying, but I had not expected it to be such exhausting business.”
Every morning, Phorn gets up at 5 to prepare the fire, while his wife prepares the bamboo tubes. After two hours, the couple stuffs the tubes with rice, flavoured with salt, sugar and milk, and with beans.The top is stopped with hay and the tubes are then roasted over the fire. At that point, Bopha shaves off pieces of the bamboo to make the tube thinner before it is again placed over another fire.
“We have to do all the work on the street so that we can sell our kralan at the same time [as preparing],” he says.
In the morning, on the well-known “kralan road”, there is a thick haze of smoke. Although all of the vendors are selling the same snack, most have come up with their own unique flavours by calibrating the recipes. For example, one vendor puts pieces of mango in his kralan, while another adds slices of jackfruit. The prices are all the same: 3,000 riel ($0.75) for a large tube and 2,000 riel for the smaller ones.
Although many travellers on the highway stop and buy kralan there, many vendors worry they won’t sell out. The snack keeps for only one or two days after it is cooked, and the rice hardens quickly.
