Indonesian Peanut Sauce Recipe

Oh, peanut sauce, how do I really like thee?  Let me depend the methods.

In Indonesia, peanut sauce is a staple served alongside many dishes, together with satay, gado-gado, and meat- or fish-stuffed greens known as siomay. Historically, cooks put together peanut sauce by pounding roasted or fried peanuts to a paste utilizing a mortar and pestle. The condiment has a wealthy nuttiness and will get its daring taste from a mixture of shallots, garlic, pink chiles, and palm sugar, whereas a contact of vinegar, lime juice, or tamarind paste lends it an acidic kick. The sauce is ubiquitous all through the nation, the place it goes by sambal kacang, saus kacang, or bumbu kacang, relying on the area. 

Although these all confer with peanut sauce, they’ll fluctuate of their preparations. Some could name for fried garlic and chiles, whereas others could incorporate aromatic makrut lime leaves or lemongrass, savory shrimp paste, and kecap manis (a candy soy sauce), amongst many different substances. Throughout Indonesia, you’ll discover sauces which might be as thick as gravy and others as skinny as heavy cream. Regardless of their variations, every is as important to Indonesian delicacies because the others. Satay could be incomplete with out the thick model sauce it is served with for dipping, and kroket (meat-filled potato croquettes) could be a lot much less fulfilling with out the fiery warmth of the variation known as sambal kacang. Karedok, a salad from West Java just like gado-gado, will get its extra brightness from a peanut sauce infused with peppery, herbaceous sand ginger. 

It’s unclear when Indonesians first started getting ready peanut sauce, however the arrival of the peanut in Indonesia might be traced again to 1690, when Spanish and Portuguese colonists introduced the legume to Asia. In accordance with culinary historian Andrew F. Smith and writer of Peanuts: The Illustrious Historical past of the Goober Pea, peanuts had made their approach throughout India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and China by the 18th century. This will clarify why peanuts and peanut sauce are additionally current in different Southeast Asian cuisines.

In Thailand, for instance, peanut sauce is often eaten with its model of satay. Thai peanut sauce virtually at all times accommodates pink curry paste, which tints it pink and infuses it with fragrant galangal, lemongrass, cilantro roots, and makrut lime leaves. And that peanut sauce you dip your Vietnamese rice paper rolls in? Its salty-sweet taste comes from a mix of fish sauce, hoisin sauce, and granulated sugar. In Singapore, hawkers pour chile-infused peanut sauce over satay bee hoon, rice vermicelli noodles with bean sprouts, water spinach, and cuttlefish. 

The peanut sauce recipe under is an easier tackle my Indonesian Chinese language mom’s, who likes to toast uncooked, skin-on peanuts in a big wok till golden, then grind them—both by hand with a mortar and pestle or within the bowl of a meals processor—till the nuts have the consistency of moist sand. It’s a barely thicker model that’s greatest eaten with gado gado, satay, and ketropak, a rice noodle dish with greens and tofu.

Although I often go to comparable lengths, I usually select the better, extra handy route by utilizing store-bought crunchy peanut butter, albeit the pure sort that accommodates solely peanuts. Nonetheless, I like to recommend making an attempt this with entire peanuts: Not solely are entire peanuts extra economical to buy, they’re additionally extra flavorful when freshly floor. As I as soon as wrote for Epicurious, peanuts, like spices, are inclined to stale and go rancid rapidly as soon as floor, so utilizing entire will typically produce a extra aromatic peanut sauce. However there isn’t any proper or incorrect, and should you want peanut sauce in a rush, do as I do and go for the peanut butter. It is higher than the choice—which is not any peanut sauce in any respect.