Gado-Gado Recipe | Indonesian Peanut Sauce Salad

Gado-gado is Indonesia's most famous salad - blanched vegetables, fried tofu and tempeh, hard-boiled eggs, and crispy kerupuk, all drenched in rich peanut sauce.

Gado-gado literally means "mix-mix" in Indonesian, which perfectly describes this beautiful medley of blanched vegetables, fried tofu and tempeh, hard-boiled eggs, and crunchy kerupuk, all dressed in a rich, slightly spicy peanut sauce.

The peanut sauce is everything. It must be made from freshly roasted peanuts, not peanut butter. The roasting develops a depth of flavor that no pre-made product can match. Combined with palm sugar, tamarind, and chili, it creates a sauce that is simultaneously sweet, sour, and spicy.

Peanut sauce: Roast 200g raw peanuts until golden. Blend with 3 garlic cloves, 4 bird's eye chilies, 2 tablespoons palm sugar, 1 tablespoon tamarind paste, 1 teaspoon shrimp paste, salt, and enough warm water for a thick but pourable consistency.

For the salad: Blanch separately - long beans, cabbage, bean sprouts, spinach. Fry tofu and tempeh cubes until golden. Boil eggs. Arrange on a plate in sections. Pour peanut sauce generously over everything. Top with fried shallots and crushed kerupuk.

In our Indonesian Cuisine Class, you learn to make the peanut sauce from scratch using a mortar and pestle - the traditional method that produces a rougher, more interesting texture than a blender.