Soto is a dish of spicy soup. Every region has its own style of Soto. Some use chicken, others use lamb/beef. The soup is served with hard-boiled eggs, cabbage, slices of fried potatoes, chinese celery leaves, and fried shallots. Sometimes, slices of Lontong (compressed rice roll) are also added. Then, people will add condiments of their choice such as “poya”, a powder of mixed fried garlic with shrimp chips, Sambal, kecap manis, and lime juice.
This recipe below is from the region where I grew up, East Java.
Ingredients:
- 1 ltr water
- 1/2 chicken
- 1 lemon grass, smashed (to release the flavor)
- 1 salam leaf (or bay leaf)
- 2 tbs oil to fry the paste
Ground to Paste: (For shortcut, buy 1 package of ‘Soto Ayam’ seasoning, nowadays available in Asian grocery store. Available brands: Indofood, Kokita, Bamboe, or Moenik)
- 3 shallots
- 4 cloves garlic
- 1/2 cm ginger
- 1 cm turmeric
- 1/4 tsp white pepper
- 1 tsp salt
Sides and Condiments:
- 4 boiled eggs, quarter them
- vermicelli (mung bean noodle)
- shredded cabbage
- 1 stalk chinese celery, chopped finely
- fried shallots
- potato chips/shrimp chips
- sambal oelek
- poya
- kecap manis
- lime wedges
Directions:
- Boil chicken with salam leaf and lemon grass in a pot.
- Heat up oil in a wok, fry the paste until fragrant, then put it into the chicken pot. Let it come to a boil, then simmer for about 20 min.
- Take out the chicken, take out the bone and shred.
How to eat:
- First, put 1/2 cup of cooked rice in a bowl. Then start putting the sides, starting with some mung bean noodle, cabbage, egg, chicken, chinese celery.
- Pour the soup (soto) into the bowl.
- Garnish with fried shallots, potato chips
- Condiments: some lime juice, kecap manis, sambal oelek, and koya. Everyone has his/her own way of enjoying soto. Some prefer sweet spicy and sour, some less sour..
How to make poya:
- Fry some shrimp chips, ground them (or blend them) with fried garlic, finely, powdery. If you have about 1 cup of ground shrimp chips, then you’d need about 2 tbs ground fried garlic. Mix well.
- Fried garlic: Peel and slice garlic thinly. Fry them in medium hot oil until they’re golden brown. Careful, they burn easily.
- Fried shrimp chips: Shrimp chips are available at Asian grocery store. Heat up oil, then fry about 5 chips, not too many at once. Your chips should ‘pop’ up within seconds (about 7 seconds). If not, it means either your oil is too hot (chips get browned fast but not popped) or not hot enough.
What to do with the left-over:
- Turmeric Fried Chicken. Drain the chicken, pat dry. Deep fry them in hot oil just to crisp the skin (remember the chicken is cooked already). It’s been soaked in spiced soup, become crispy and tasty.
- Note: This is a very common way to make Indonesian fried chicken. We infuse them with the marinated by simmering. When it’s time to deep fry, the chicken is already cooked, thus it will not ’swim’ in the oil too long. You can say, it’s a little healthier then deep frying them from the time they’re raw.
- Turmeric Boiled Eggs. Put some hardboiled eggs into the soup, bring to a boil, then simmered until the eggs are infused with the soto flavor (color turn yellow). Cut them in halves, serve as one of your bento dish.
