I’m back with another food post (\>w</)
Today I’m writing about some Indonesian stews.
I differentiate stews from soup by the thickness of their liquid. Soups have more liquid whilst stews have less. The reduced soup in stews can be called gravy, I suppose, though they’re not cooked nor served separately.
Now, according to Wikipedia, the one called Indonesian stew is a dish called ‘semur’.
Semur daging (Indonesian beef stew)
Semur consist of meat, usually beef or chicken, braised with potato and tomato in thick and sweet gravy. The sweetness came mostly from sweet soy sauce (‘kecap manis’). Of course, you can add other ingredients. I myself like to add carrot and vermicelli in my semur. Semur ayam or chicken stew is also popular.
Semur ayam (Indonesian chicken stew)
However, I personally think there are some other dishes that can be categorized as a stew, mainly because they are cooked in liquid for a long enough time that the liquid got absorbed and evaporated, plus the meat became very tender and juicy, and here are some of them:
1. Rendang
Beef rendang
Following CNN’s survey which placed rendang as the number one most delicious food in the world, their popularity outside Indonesia, or more precisely outside the South East Asia, has skyrocketed. Commonly, rendang is known to be made from beef, slow-cooked in coconut milk, chilli, and a spice mixture. The hours of braising made the meat tender and juicy with a rich flavour. As it is very rich in flavour, eating it with white rice is recommended. Most Padang restaurant have them.
Even so, rendang doesn’t actually exclusively uses beef. Chicken rendang is a popular variation, and other ingredients from fish to intestines to vegetables can be used with the same spice mixture and cooking method. Of course, each place has their own spice mixture, which makes it all the more unique.
Chicken rendang
2. Terik
Terik, commonly made using beef, is a stew from Central Java. The predominant taste is, of course, sweet, so eating it with white rice is the best. It also uses coconut milk and a mixture of spices, quite similar to rendang actually, just the taste is sometimes too sweet for most people’s palate, though not as oily.
3. Lapis
Lapis daging
Similar but different from terik, lapis also commonly uses beef but tend to be less sweet and usually doesn’t use coconut milk, as it originated from Surabaya in East Java whose people prefer salty foods. Most of the time, the beef is cooked with fried potato.
4. Sambal goreng
Sambal goreng kentang ati ampela
As the name suggests, sambal goreng is, simply put, sautéed sambal (AKA Indonesian chilli paste). However, it goes beyond that. Sambal goreng has many variety, in which various ingredients are cooked in the sautéed sambal. The most common ingredients are chicken liver (making sambal goreng hati) and potato (making sambal goreng kentang), though sometimes these two are made into one sambal goreng called sambal goreng kentang ati ampela. Do note that, a bit different from the other stews in this list, sambal goreng is more of a side dish rather than the main dish, and is usually served to accompany a variety of dishes, from opor ayam to nasi kuning (see my post on Indonesian Soups and Indonesia Independence Day t know more about these two dishes).
5. Brongkos
If you’ve seen my post about Indonesian soups, you’ll be quite familiar with rawon. Similar to rawon, brongkos also use kluwek. However, the similarity ends there. As befitting to a dish originating from the central part of Java, more specifically from Yogyakarta, brongkos tends to be sweeter thanks to palm sugar, quite spicy due to the cabai rawit (bird’s eye chilli), and uses coconut milk in it. Although beef is also commonly used in brongkos, other meat such as goat can also be used. Other than those, brongkos also has more ingredients in it, with hard-boiled egg, tofu, tempeh/kidney beans, and chayote being the regular line-up in a brongkos.
6. Gudeg
A complete gudeg dish, best eaten with opor ayam and white rice
The gudeg itself is the shredded-looking one on the left
Going clockwise, from the top, there are tahu bacem, tempe bacem, sambal goreng krecek, telur pindang, and gudeg
Gudeg is also a stew-like dish originating from Yogyakarta. Gudeg itself is actually young unripe jackfruit (‘nangka muda’) which is stewed for several hours in a mixture of coconut milk, palm sugar, and spices. However, if you buy a gudeg at a restaurant, it usually means you’re not only ordering the gudeg itself but also the opor ayam, telur pindang, tofu/tempeh, and sambal goreng krecek. The tofu/tempeh can be stewed with the young jackfruit or being made into bacem (I love tempe bacem). Krecek, on the other hand, is a spicy stew made from the skin of a cow. When cooking at home, many people use rambak as the main ingredient for their krecek (see my post on Indonesian Crackers to know more about rambak). As such, even though the gudeg itself can be considered vegetarian (though it still uses garlic and shallot), the whole gudeg dish typically found being sold is not.
Those are some Indonesian stews you’d probably encounter if you visit Indonesia, especially the Java island. Most of them are spicy and rich in flavour, so eating them with white rice is the best way to enjoy them. Also note that most of them uses coconut milk, so if your fat or cholesterol level is high, think twice before consuming (too many of) them. Additional note, if you have high blood pressure, be careful in East Java whose food tend to be salty, and if you have high blood sugar level, be careful when eating in Central Java area where food tend to be sweet.
That’s all for today. No recipe for this post (sorry) as I don’t know any of them TxT
See you next post~
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