Sambal Terasi

- Sweet, aromatic Indonesian chili sauce -

Sambal, Indonesian hot sauce, is perhaps the most important and distinctive element in Indonesian cooking. There are many different types of sambal, all starting from chilies--red, orange, yellow or green. One of the most delicious and fragrant sambals is sambal terasi. Lliterally translated out as shrimp paste hot sauce, sambal terasi doesn't taste like shrimp at all, but rather has an aromatic, sweet flavour from the addition of kaffir lime leaves (daun jeruk) and Indonesian brown sugar (gula merah), and the terasi (shrimp paste) then just balances those flavours out with some extra complexity. On its own shrimp paste smells (arguably) foul, but once it gets into these Indonesian sauces and dishes it just adds something magical to the whole concoction. 

I first tried sambal terasi pretty soon after I first arrived in Indonesia, and immediately yearned to be able to make it myself. But sambal terasi is a combination of many flavours, ingredients, all of which were entirely new to me when I came, and since most of the Indonesian food recipes online were in Indonesian, it has taken me almost this long to get my sambal terasi where I wanted it (I started with basic sambals, and love the basic sambal as well, so it took me a while to try, and furthermore I tried without a recipe once last year, and it was so unpleasant it took me a while to try it again for that reason as well!)

In the first photo, I have shown the cast of characters for a delicious sambal terasi, although I did not show the exact proportions--partly because you can adjust them somewhat to your taste, and also just because I think I got a little carried away with all the colours. But all the ingredients are there, there are just a few extra shallots, curly chilis, and perhaps an extra clove of garlic and candlenut.

All tolled, I hope you enjoy this sambal as much as I do!

I'll include the ingredients in both English and Indonesian for your convenience. I am quite confident one should be able to find all these things in other countries, when in the Prairies this winter, I was able to find everything except candlenut, which I just omitted, and it was still delicious.

Sambal Terasi

(Makes about one bowl - enough to serve with a meal for 5-8)

Ingredients:

• 1 tomato (tomat)
• 9 long, curly red chilies, not too spicy (cabe merah)
• 4-6 hot red or orange chilies (cabe rawit)
• 2 cloves garlic (bawang putih)
• 3 small shallots* (bawang merah)
• 2 pieces candlenut (kemiri)
• scant 5-8 tbsp vegetable oil (minyak goreng)
• 1 thumb shrimp paste (terasi)
• 1-2 cubed inches of indonesian brown sugar (gula merah)
• 3-4 kaffir lime leaves (daun jeruk)

Directions:
There are two general ways to make sambal.

The first, the traditional way would be:

• Shallow fry the fresh ingredients (tomato to candlenut) first, and then crush everything together with a mortar and pestel (ulekan), adding the lime leaves, shrimp paste and brown sugar in at the end. 

The second, the quicker way is:

• Pulse the fresh ingredients coarsely in a blender first, then fry them in a rather generous dose of oil, with the lime leaves, until they've cooked through. Cook the sauce until much of water has evaporated, add some more water, and evaporate it again two or three times, until the tomato is nice and cooked. At the end, add in the sugar and shrimp paste, crumbling it all in your fingers first, and making sure it's all dissolved into the sauce. Adjust the amount of sugar to taste.

I usually leave the lime leaves in when I store the sauce, as they continue to add flavour over time.

The sauce should keep for at least a week in the fridge, as long as you haven't skimped on the oil.

* Note: if you have to swap in onions or purple onions for the shallots, just keep in mind that a shallot is only a little bigger than a large clove of garlic, so just use an inch or two of onion if you make one batch.

And that's it. Hope you enjoy your sambal! Please let me know what you think in the comments, and if you have any questions please ask them there, too.

Enjoy!