Indonesian · Main
Nasi Goreng
- Easy
- 25 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with a sweet edge rounding the corners, aromatics blooming from the first bite, with warmth in the tail.
Ingredients
- 4 cups day-old rice, cold, clumps broken
- 3 tbsp kecap manis: the sweet soy that IS the flavor of Indonesia
- 2 tbsp sambal or 3 red chilies + 3 shallots + 2 garlic, pounded
- 150g chicken, shrimp, or leftover anything; 2 eggs
- The crown: a fried egg per person, prawn crackers, cucumber, fried shallots
Equipment
Wok
The skills inside
Wok techniqueSugar stages & caramelSautéing & the shallow fry
The words inside
Shrimp Sizing & Prawn ConfusionThe Wok
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · egg · shellfish · soy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Fry the pounded paste in generous oil until it smells like an Indonesian street at dusk.
- Protein in; then rice, pressing and tossing over maximum heat.
- Kecap manis down the side of the wok: let it scorch slightly before tossing; that caramel char is the taste.
- Well in the middle; scramble the eggs there; toss through. Crown each plate with a wobbling fried egg and crackers.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Wok technique 28 recipes
- Everything went in dry and went in in order. Wet protein or wet vegetables drop the wok below the heat that browns, and what follows is a stew in a round pan however hard the burner is working.
- The wok stays loud from the first moment to the last. A wok that falls quiet has been overloaded, and the food in it is now boiling in its own liquid.
- Every piece is coated and glossy with no pooled sauce in the bottom of the dish: the sauce should cling by reduction and starch, not sit under the food.
- Vegetables keep their colour and a bite at the centre. Grey-green greens or a limp stem mean too long in the pan, and nothing later in the dish recovers them.
- It carries the faint scorched note that only comes from food touching metal above about 200C, distinct from bitterness, which means the aromatics were burnt and is a different failure entirely.
Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once, or it went in wet. The wok loses its heat, the food releases water and simmers, the sauce thins instead of clinging, and the dish arrives pale and slack with liquid pooling under it.
Sugar stages & caramel 53 recipes
- Nothing is stirred once it is boiling, and any crystals clinging to the side of the pan are brushed down rather than left to fall in.
- Judged by temperature or by a tested stage rather than by time: consecutive stages are a few degrees apart and look identical in the pan.
- Colour is read off the heat and in good light, remembering that sugar keeps darkening after the flame is out.
- Stopped decisively at the point wanted: off the heat and into the next liquid or onto a cold surface, rather than left to coast in a hot pan.
- The result is clear and smooth rather than grainy, cloudy, or seized into a solid mass.
Where it goes wrong It was stirred after coming to the boil, or a stray crystal from the side of the pan fell back in. One crystal seeds the whole pan and the syrup turns grainy within seconds, and once sugar has crystallised the only cure is more water and starting the whole thing again.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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