Indonesian Cuisine

Credit photos Andra Dănilă

Indonesia is an archipelago comprising more than 13,000 islands. 6,000 islands are populated by 238 million people, making it the world's fourth most populous country. It is the largest archipelagic state in the world, by area and population. Indonesia consists of hundreds of distinct ethnic and linguistic groups. The largest ethnic group are the Javanese. 

Indonesian cuisine varies by region and is based on Chinese, Spanish, European, Middle Eastern, and Indian precedents. The main Indonesian cooking methods are frying, grilling, stir frying, boiling and steaming.

Main ingredients for Indonesian dishes are:

Rice holds the central place in Indonesian culture. Rice is often eaten as plain rice with just a few protein and vegetable dishes as side dishes. Rice can be served cooked in coconut milk, sometimes with turmeric, steamed in woven packets of coconut fronds or in banana leaves, as rice crackers, desserts, noodles, rice wine, fried rice (nasi goreng, considered the national dish of Indonesia).

Indonesian traditional meals usually consist of nasi (steamed rice) as staple, surrounded by sayur-mayur (vegetables and soup) and lauk-pauk (meat or fish side dishes). Each dishes are placed in piring saji or separate communal large plates or bowls.

Wheat is not a native plant to Indonesia, Indonesians began to use it for wheat-based foods, Chinese noodles, Indian roti, and Dutch bread. Indonesia is one of the world's major producer and consumer of instant noodle, and instant noodle has become a staple in Indonesian households for quick hot meal.

Vegetables are widely used in Indonesian cuisine: spinach, water spinach, genjer (yellow lettuce), melinjo, papaya, beans, eggplants, cassava leaves, cabbage, cauliflower, potatoes, carrots, cucumbers.  They are eaten raw, in salads, in soups, sautted with garlic, in stir fries, curries or boiled.

Meat: poultry (mostly chicken and duck), beef, water buffalo, goat and mutton. The meat can be fried, grilled, cooked as soup, cooked in coconut milk or can be processed to be thinly-sliced and dried, or made into abon (meat floss).

Seafood, a lot of seafood (it is quite normal for an archipelagic country): tuna, milkfish, mackerel, anchovy, swordfish, shark, shrimp, crab, mussel, and so on. Seafood are usually being grilled, boiled, fried or in a soup.

Peanuts are widely used in many Indonesian dishes to garnish many dishes, in marinades and dipping sauces. Peanut oil is one of the most commonly used cooking oils in Indonesia.  Coconut milk is used in many recipes from savoury dihes to desserts. There are two types of coconut milk, thin coconut milk and thick coconut milk. The difference depends on the water and oil content. Thin coconut milk is usually used for soups, while the thicker variety is used for desserts.

Spices and other flavorings are often used for Indonesian dishes: nutmeg or clove (native spices to Indonesia), black pepper, turmeric, lemongrass, shallot, cinnamon, coriander, tamarind (from India), ginger, and garlic (from China).

Here are some dishes my daughter, Andra, tasted during her journey to Indonesia:

Java

Bali