Indonesian Sate (Sate Babi and Sate Ayam Bumbu Kecap/Kacang)
November 5th, 2009 | Indonesian Recipes | 27 Comments
Please welcome Rita of Mochachocolata-Rita as a guest blogger on Rasa Malaysia. Rita is an Indonesian who currently resides in Hong Kong. Whenever I visit her blog, I feel “jealous” that she is constantly traveling and eating around Asia (she loves to shop, too!). As a true Indonesian, Rita shares with us her mouthwatering and tantalizing sate recipe, and outlined the steps involved in making authentic sate (photos in the gallery). Her sate is seriously great looking and I can’t wait to try her recipe!
Living in Hong Kong, I am blessed with plenty Indonesian restaurants. Missing my home country’s food? No worries, they’re just a short MTR ride away. However, finding a great Indonesian sate dish is proven to be challenging. Most places simply deep fry their skewered marinated meat and call them sate. My Hong Kong friends thought these “Hong- Kongized watered down Indonesian sate” were yummy, until they tried mine. I developed the recipe based on the Sate Babi/Ayam Kecap I always ordered from my opposite neighbor when I was young. They came out pretty close. I promise you, those sate were the ones that made me spend my teenage years being not-so-svelte, despite the extra fast metabolism.
So, I’m sorry, baby. You’re never going back to those deep-fried-meat-on-a-stick no more…(learn how to make Indonesian sate after the jump)
Remember to soak those bamboo skewers in water for at least 1 hour to prevent them from burning later. I soaked mine for a good few hours; they kinda look good in the vase, eh? I should use them to decorate my flat.
The marinate:
I made two versions of sate, pork and chicken. It is best to get meat with a good amount of fat in it; the fatty bits will make the sate tender and juicy. However, if you’re on a low fat diet (hold your tears), no worries. I made a few sticks of lean and mean sate made of skinless, boneless chicken breasts for sous chef, who’s on a low fat diet, and my other friends ended up eating them too. They were that good.
Cut your meat into bite sized cubes, and marinate with:
- a good sprinkle of garlic salt
- a couple dashes of ground paprika
- a dash of white pepper
- 2 tsp ground coriander seeds
- 2 tsp ground nutmeg
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp olive oil
- 2 cloves of shallot, thinly sliced
- A dash of soy sauce
- Lots of kecap manis (Indonesian sweet soy sauce). You want them to be almost drowned in this.
Marinate for a few hours, or for best result, let it marinate overnight in the fridge.
The skewering:
The next day, stick the meat cubes with the bamboo skewers. I stick 4-5 pieces of meat cubes per sate. If you’re using meat with fatty bits, mix fatty and lean meat cubes in each skewer.
The grilling and basting:
I made the sate for a BBQ party, so I could grill them on a charcoal grill, which is the best scenario. However, if you don’t have one, it’s not the end of the world; you could make a pretty decent sate with an oven. Simply preheat oven to 200C, place the sate sticks on a baking sheet and grill them until you see some burnt bits. Please do not deep fry some sticks of meat and call them sate, pretty please?
Before grilling, squeeze a bit of lime juice over the sate.
While grilling, baste the sate with a mix of:
- kecap manis (sweet soy sauce), this should be the dominant flavor
- a dash of fish sauce
- a clove of thinly sliced shallot
- juice of half lime
The sates are done when the meat feels a bit firm (not rock hard), shrunk a bit, and beautifully caramelized.
The sauce:
I made two different sauces. One is kecap manis sauce, which is the same as the baste and peanut sauce.
- 1 cup of roasted peanuts (or use crunchy peanut butter)
- 1 clove of garlic
- 2 cloves shallot
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 2 tsp ground coriander seeds
- 1 small block of palm sugar (or replace with brown sugar)
- Salt, white pepper, a bit of olive oil
Process everything in a food processor until well mixed.
To serve, place the peanut sauce on a plate, add a dash of fish sauce, drizzle generously with kecap manis, and squeeze juice of a lime. I omitted chili from the sauces as some of my friends don’t eat hot food. Feel free to add one of two freshly chopped chilies in the sauce.
Bathe your freshly grilled sate in one of the sauces and serve (optional = serve with steamed rice or lontong/rice cakes).
Warning! Highly addictive, super popular, you might never have enough sate. Serve these babies in a friend’s party, and your friends will keep inviting you (or maybe just your sate).
A million thanks to Rasa Malaysia for inviting me to blabber in this beautiful blog of hers. I am so honored!
Subscribe to RASA MALAYSIA by RSS
Follow RASA MALAYSIA on Twitter
Join RASA MALAYSIA on Facebook
Still not Sate Makassar, the Kecap Manis sauce NEEDS cabe rawit, in my ever so humble opinion… ;)
Not sate makassar indeed :D
…and I am with you on cabe rawit
However, most of my Hong Kong friends can’t handle the heat from cabe rawit…:(
For those of us that CAN handle the heat, what is cabe rawit and do you add it to both the marinade and the basting/dipping sauce?
This looks great! Going to make it this weekend.
cabe rawit = bird’s eye chilli. they are tiny and super hot. chop a few pieces (test the heat with just 1 chilli first ^_^) and add to the dipping sauce. wait for the moment when you bite into them….and whoa! hottt!
what to do when it’s too hot? = sugar, sweet drinks, not carbonated ones ^_^
have fun!
I love sate but haven’t tried Indonesian sate. This looks really good, yummy!
you gotta try indonesian sate, kate…you’ll love it! :)
Looks absolutely delicious!
thanks, ninette :)
I am a fan of Rita! hehe so glad to see her beautiful creation featured here! I’m hungry just looking at the photos =)
hehehe…thanks for your support, w. i am gonna continue to stalk you ;)
oh yum it looks good !! I’ve always had Satay, malaysian style with spicy peanut sauce but not Indonesian style..
ohhh…gotta try indonesian ones :) they’re…different
Beautifully done! Fabulous photos!
hi lil teochew, nice to see you here. thanks for the nice comments :)
Ahhh.. Rita and Bee in the same room. This place is just too damn sexy. I can’t take it! :)
Great Sate recipe btw. I wasn’t familiar with Indonesian Sate.. but now i am!
zenman!!!! *poking zenman with the used sate bambo skewers*
zenman: ow! ow! ow!
Mm, they look totally delicious! I want to eat all of them. :)
:) back home in indonesia, each of us could eat about 20 sticks of these babies. oh yeah!
Great looking sate babi, right down to the enamel plate. I agree with the need for cabe rawit (bird chilies, which are sliced and added to the marinade/sauce–it looks like one or two may have been snuck in).
These look delicious – I can see how they might be addictive! ~ Belle
Scrumprious photo again, I’ve just eaten and your making me hungry again!
Thanks
Andy – http://onceuponathyme.wordpress.com/
That looks so good! I’ve heard so much about Indonesian sate from my dutch friend who gave me kecap manis so this may be a good time to try making it myself!
Oh man, this sounds delicious! The marinade is so rich with flavor. I agree, the bamboo skewers do look kinda cool as a decoration! The light coming through the window in that photo looks gorgeous too.
tasty chunks of meat.
sate babi is rather hard to find here in Malaysia, for obvious reasons.
but the ones in Melaka use lots of turmeric in the marinade,
and served with some peanut sauce with chopped pineapples. tangy, but a little weird, if i may say so myself.
http://www.j2kfm.com/pork-satay-xiang-ji-melaka/
Growing up in the Washington, D.C., in the 50s/60s, our family’s favorite dinner dish was “Pork Sates,” the recipe for which my mom found in some cookbook long forgotten. We pronounced “Sates” as one syllable with a long-a sound. Years later, we learned from a Washington Post article by the wife of the Indonesian ambassador that the dish we loved was very similar to Indonesian “Satay” (with a two-syllable pronunciation and “ah” pronunciation for the “a”).
Fast forward some years and I meet a cute nurse from Malaysia who’d been in the U.S. for six months and tells me she really misses satay. I tell her “I can cook some for you!” I invite her over for dinner and make our beloved dish. She likes it OK, but says it’s not the satay that she’d grown up with. I hadn’t known that Malaysian satay was different. Very different! (Starting with adding a bunch of the hot “chili padi” of course. :-) )
I look forward to making your recipe and comparing it to my family’s “sates” and my now-wife’s Malaysian satays.
Many thanks for posting this recipe!
– Mike in San Jose (( saw this recipe in reference from my friend Nate of the “House of Annie’s” excellent Hawaiian/Malaysian/American/International food blog: http://chezannies.blogspot.com/ )
Sate is originally from indonesia, as the word “SATE” is on indonesia vocabulary. I like this version of sate, taste fantastic! thanks for the recipe! but just wondering how do you blend the palm sugar into food processor? cos palm sugar is “hard” things…
The word ’sate’ has exist long before the conception of Indonesian Language. Sate is a common dish which can be found in most part of Asia, with different names and styles of course.:)