Indonesian Street Food

Ziep from Vietnam ask me about Indonesian street food. And I think some of you will be interested also. So I’ll post it here. Hope you find it interesting or useful, and if there’s any serious eater around you let me know. My dream is to travel and taste the food around the world.


Siomay
Description : Unlike Chinese, Indonesian siomay doesn’t consist of two parts (layer and filling). Indonesian Siomay looks like meatball and eaten with peanut and soy sauce. Indonesian siomay usually eaten with hard tofu, cabbages, potatoes and other. Usually it’s made from fish.
Taste : It’s a little bit chewy and because it got fish in it some people think it smells not good. But once you taste it, you’ll became addicted to it.



Gorengan
Description : One of the most famous street foods in here. Gorengan in English means “deep fried”, that’s because how to make gorengan is to fried lots of things. Just like Japanese tempura, Gorengan came in many kinds. There are tofu, tempe, cassava, sweet potato, and more.
Taste : Because usually they’re coated with some kind of flour, it became crispy. Because it came with lots of variety you’ll never got bored with it. Some people eat it with seasoning such as raw chili, chili sauce, salt and so on. And what makes this food popular is because it’s cheap.



Rangi cakes
Description : Made from corn cakes that’s baked for a few minutes until it became a little bit crispy but chewy inside. After being cooked, melted caramelized red sugar added.
Taste : One of my personal favorite. With friendly prize you could get some rangi cakes that enough to stuff your hungry stomach. It taste great especially because there’s red sugar added in the end, make it smells good and taste good. Yumm caramel <3



Otak-Otak
Description : Otak means brain in English, but worry not this food got nothing to do with it. Made from mixing fish, flour and spices until it became fish paste. Some people said that it looks like Indonesian siomay. What makes it different is that Otak-otak was wrapped with banana leaves and burned directly on fire. After done spicy peanut sauce was added. Taste : Superb! If you eat at the right place it will taste magnificent. Because it’s wrapped with banana leaves there’s this nice scent and since its burn on fire it got this nice smoky feeling. For best result it would be better to burn it using wood. The banana and fire small will reduce the fishy smell. It got chewy texture and the spicy peanut sauce makes it taste better.



Tahu Gejrot
Description : Tahu is tofu, while gejrot is a little bit hard to describe. I think it means smashing something that’s soft and watery, like sponge. Some people called it smackdown tofu in English. First you fried the tofu like usual, what makes it special is the sauce. The sauce made from garlic, raw chili (Indonesian people like to eat spicy food), vinegar, red sugar, salt, and lots of things that the seller refuse to tell me >.<
Taste : It’s really unique. It’s spicy but at the same time because there’s vinegar added it became refreshing also, but that’s not all don’t forget the sugar. Sugar will reduce the acidic feeling created from the vinegar and gives nice sweet flavor. One of Indonesian delegacies you should try.

Well that’s all. The most important things is even though Indonesia got lots of unique street food. Currently our traditional food is dying because they can’t compete with modern snack, such as crepes, burger, fried potatoes with flavor, and so on. What about you? Do your countries have some kind of unique snack? Share it with us ^^