Indonesian Cuisine: Rendang, Satay, Nasi Goreng and 6 Famous Dishes

Indonesia has more than seventeen thousand islands, and its cooking varies enormously: Java is sweeter, Sumatra hotter and richer, Bali more herbal. What unites them: bumbu, coconut milk, sweet soy sauce (kecap manis), and rice as the base of every meal — "nasi" means rice, and it begins the names of a great many dishes.

The core dishes

1. Rendang

Beef cooked in coconut milk and bumbu for four hours or more until the liquid has evaporated entirely and the meat fries in the remaining oil, turning very dark.

That is the difference between rendang and curry: if there is a sauce, it is a curry (kalio), not rendang. Rendang is dry, dark and glossy with fat.

Continuous stirring in the last hour is essential so it does not stick and scorch — this is the stage in which the colour and flavour develop.

Rendang keeps for weeks without refrigeration — which was genuinely its original purpose.

2. Satay

Small pieces of meat on skewers, grilled and served with peanut sauce.

The sauce is the dish: toasted peanuts ground with kecap manis, chilli, lime and garlic. The consistency should be thick but pourable — if it stiffens, loosen it with hot water a little at a time.

The marinade contains kecap manis, and its sugar caramelises on the grill and gives the dark glossy colour — which is why the grilling must be fast over strong heat.

3. Nasi goreng

Fried rice with bumbu and kecap manis, served with a fried egg on top, cucumber and krupuk (crisp crackers).

The rice must be from yesterday and cold from the fridge. Fresh rice is moist and sticky and turns to porridge in the pan.

Kecap manis is what gives the sweet brown colour — it is soy sauce thickened with palm sugar, and there is no exact substitute besides soy sauce and molasses.

4. Gado-gado

A salad of boiled and raw vegetables with egg, tofu and peanut sauce. "Gado-gado" means "mix-mix".

Each vegetable is boiled separately to its own doneness — broccoli two minutes, beans four, carrot five. Boiling them all together ruins half of them.

5. Bumbu

The essential spice paste: shallot, garlic, chilli, turmeric, galangal and lemongrass, pounded in a mortar or blitzed in a blender.

It must be fried in oil until fragrant and the oil separates — without that frying the flavour stays raw and harsh.

It is made in quantity and frozen in ice cube trays — which halves the time of any Indonesian dish.

6. Krupuk

Crisp crackers of starch and prawn or fish, which puff suddenly when fried. Served with almost everything.

The oil must be very hot — if it is cool they stay small and hard instead of puffing.

Kecap manis

Soy sauce thickened with palm sugar: thick, sweet and dark. It goes into roughly half of Indonesian cooking and gives it its characteristic brown colour.

The word "kecap" is genuinely the origin of the English word ketchup — the word travelled from Southeast Asia to Europe and changed meaning on the way.

The homemade substitute: soy sauce with molasses or brown sugar at 2:1, boiled until thickened.

Coconut milk

In Indonesian cooking it divides in two: the thick cream from the top of the tin (for frying and starting a dish) and the thin milk (for simmering).

No hard boiling once it goes in — it splits and goes grainy. Low heat and an occasional stir.

Ingredients worth buying

• Kecap manis: the ingredient that gives the identity.
• Full-fat coconut milk: tinned, not powdered.
• Galangal and lemongrass: the base of bumbu.
• Raw peanuts: toasted and ground for the sauce.
• Kaffir lime and salam leaves: added to the pot and removed before serving.

How a meal is ordered

An Indonesian meal is rice in the centre with many small dishes around it, and everyone takes from everything.

Rijsttafel, the rice table, is a Dutch-Indonesian tradition: dozens of small dishes with the rice — and it is what introduced this cuisine to the world.

Common mistakes

• Rendang with a sauce: that is kalio, not rendang — the liquid must evaporate completely.
• Fresh rice in nasi goreng: it turns to porridge.
• Not frying the bumbu: the flavour stays raw and harsh.
• Boiling coconut milk hard: it splits.
• Boiling all the gado-gado vegetables together: half collapse and half stay raw.

Where to start

Nasi goreng is the easiest entry — twenty minutes with simple ingredients, and it is the right use for yesterday's rice.

Then satay (a simple grill, with the sauce doing the work). Gado-gado after that, and rendang last — that is a four-hour project.

Why does rendang keep so long?

Because all the water has evaporated. Bacteria need water to grow, and after four hours of cooking rendang is nearly dry and coated in fat and spices — which is natural preservation.

The dish genuinely originated as travel food: the Minangkabau of Sumatra made it before long journeys so it would keep for weeks without refrigeration.