Common Seafood in Indonesia, and Their Names

Halo!

This time, I’ll explain a bit about the common seafood in Indonesia, and their names. With a lot of water body, Indonesia has many seas and rivers where people can catch seafood. This means in a lot of coastal cities, like Surabaya and Makassar, fresh seafood is easy to come by and many seafood-based foods were invented.

Our fishers are called ‘nelayan’, and they usually use net (‘jaring’) and/or fishing pole (‘pancing’) to fish (‘memancing’) from their boats (‘perahu’). There are many types of boats, both manual and motor-powered, with some regions having their own unique boats. And, not that different from other fishers across the world, they departed at sunset, spend the night at the sea, and came back at dawn to sell their spoils

Sadly, with over-fishing, many marine animals are now extinct or endangered. The lack of Indonesians who wants to become fisher, how exporting the products could give companies higher yield, and the demand for foreign seafood not commonly found in Indonesia water caused by globalization mean quite a lot of seafood in Indonesia is now imported.

Ah, before we go further, please note that ‘seafood’ here means any meat of water-based animals, whether they live in seawater, fresh water, or brackish and even muddy water. In Indonesia, we can call these category as ‘ikan-ikanan’ (meaning ‘fish-kinds’) or ‘boga bahari’, though many people simply said ‘seafood’ and most would know what they mean. Also keep in mind that not all seafood mentioned below can be found in Indonesia, as some are purely imported products.

Right, anyway, first I’ll show you the non-fish variety. For the commonly consumed ones, we have squids (‘cumi-cumi’) and cuttlefish (‘sotong’), clams (‘kerang’) and oyster (‘tiram’), shrimps and prawns (‘udang’), and crabs (‘kepiting’). Other less-commonly consumed ones include octopuses (‘gurita’), eel (‘belut’) and conger (‘sidat’), lobsters (‘lobster’), jellyfish (‘ubur-ubur’), sea urchin (‘bulu babi’), and rays (‘pari’).

There’s also seafood that are no longer legal to eat, such as sea turtles and their eggs. Some Indonesian also consumed amphibians, most notably (green) frogs (‘kodok’) which are considered haram by some Muslims and are not actually seafood but I’ll just mention it here. Swikee is the most common method to eat frogs here, other than deep-frying them in batter of course.

Of course, each of the above-mentioned seafood has more than one species (?) with each type having their own perfect spice match. We especially consume many types of mollusks and shrimps. For clams, the commonly eaten clams are:

Blood cockles (‘kerang dara’)

Green mussels (‘kerang hijau’)

Atlantic jackknife clam (‘kerang bambu’)

Scallop (‘simping’)

Kerang batik (Wikipedia said it’s the Paratapes undulates)

Oyster (‘tiram’)

Lorjuk

Kupang

Kol nenek (a type of snail)

For shrimps and prawns, which we both call ‘udang’, we have:

Acetes (‘udang rebon’), which refers to any small shrimps

Tiger prawn (‘udang windu’ or ‘udang pancet’)

River prawn (‘udang galah’)

Whiteleg shrimp (‘udang vaname’)

Next, we’ll talk about the fishes. We sourced our fishes from the river, muddy water, and the sea. There are so many types of fish one can eat in Indonesia, but the most commonly sold as a dish and consumed ones are:

Gourami (‘ikan gurame’)

Milkfish (‘ikan bandeng’)

John dory (‘ikan dori’), mostly sold filleted

Catfish (‘ikan lele’)

Nile tilapia (‘ikan nila’)

Shark catfish (‘ikan patin’)

Snapper (‘ikan kakap’)

Some others that are also usually consumed but more like as home cooking includes pomfret (‘ikan bawal’), mackerel tuna (‘ikan tongkol’), Spanish mackerel (‘ikan tenggiri’), Mozambique tilapia (‘ikan mujair’), Rastrelliger (‘ikan kembung’), striped snakehead (‘ikan gabus’), and carp (‘ikan mas’ or ‘ikan karper’). Though with the increase of home-based F&B businesses, it is not that odd to find dishes using these fishes sold in small kiosks. Just search them up if you want to know what they and their dishes look like.

There are also fishes that are not traditionally used in Indonesian cooking but is now commonly found in supermarkets, such as salmon and tuna. However, the most infamous fish in Indonesia is the anchovies called ikan teri, which are small fishes that are almost always dried into salted fish with awfully salty smell (and taste). It’s quite a great condiment for ‘blank canvasses’ such as rice and porridge, though.

Many of those fishes are sold in either the traditional markets (pasar tradisional) or in supermarkets (pasar swalayan). In the case of fresh fish, if you buy it at a traditional market, you might want to get there at 3 or 4 AM so you can secure the freshest fish. You can certainly come at a more reasonable hour, but as most traditional markets aren’t yet equipped with cooling facilities, you might not be able to choose the best fish as those fishes became stale the longer it stays there. On the other hand, if you buy it at a supermarket, the price is certainly higher than at the traditional market, but they usually try to keep their seafood, at least, cool by using ice cubes and cooling racks. Some supermarkets also keep some seafood alive, either in a tank or not (usually not for crabs, they’re just tied up but you can see them move), so it’s quite…fresh.

For dishes using seafood, a variety of restaurants and small shops (‘warung’) process and cook select seafood with their own unique spice blend. Most prefer to sell one or a few types only rather than having all seafood in their menu. Some restaurants also have fish tanks from where certain fish and clams are caught (and killed) as per the customer’s order. As ‘foreign’ fishes, dory, tuna, and salmon are mostly sold by Japanese restaurants, western restaurants, or modern cafés.

I personally like fried seafood accompanied by certain sauces, such as ikan gurame asam manis (deep-fried fillet of gourami with sweet and sour sauce), udang mayonaise (deep-fried prawns with mayonnaise), and kepiting soka goreng tepung (deep-fried soft-shell crab, especially with sweet chili sauce). Other than being deep-fried, clams and prawns are mostly stir-fried, either with sweet sauce or spicy sambal. For fish, other than being deep-fried with or without batter, can be made into stews, grilled (especially above open fire), or made into pepes where the fish is wrapped in banana leaves with herbs and spices before being steamed until soft (soft as in you can consume even the bones). Some fish and shrimps are also salted, whilst milkfish is often processed until the bones become so soft you can eat them (using pressure cooker, thus called ‘bandeng presto’) or processed by removing all its bones (called ‘bandeng cabut duri’, literally means ‘deboned milkfish’) before being deep-fired, with or without egg.

Soups are also a choice, though not that often as the seafood tends to be mushy. One soup dish you can usually find in high-class Chinese restaurants in Indonesia uses crab meat and asparagus, called ‘sup asparagus kepiting’. A similar but now a bit uncommon soup is sup hisit, which use the fin of a shark (don't ask me whether this is legal or not).

If you want to eat non-mushy fish in a soup, you can use fish balls. Adapted from the Chinese, these white meatballs called hiwan are bouncy and smooth, and can be filled with minced meat. Minced meat from Spanish mackerel in particular is often made into a dish originated from Palembang called ‘empek-empek’ or ‘pempek’ (they are so good, especially the ‘submarine’ (‘kapal selam’) type with an egg inside, I promise). Of course, thanks to globalization, many seafood-based processed products from around the world enter Indonesia, including chikuwa from Japan, caviar, and smoked salmon.

You might have notice that traditionally, Indonesian does not consume raw seafood. It is generally unsafe to do so in Indonesia, unless in specialty restaurants like Japanese restaurants. Many of the older generation still frowned upon raw fish like when served as a sushi or sashimi, so be attentive.

Here’s a short summary of seafood names in Bahasa Indonesia:

Fish (noun) = ikan

Clam = kerang

Shrimp and prawn = udang

Squid = cumi-cumi

Crab = kepiting

That’s all for now. I’m craving for some udang mayones right now….

Anyway, see you in my next post^^

*Here’s a bonus picture of my favourite udang mayonnaise from Moi Garden restaurant in Surabaya (so plump, juicy, creamy...)