Easy Nasi Goreng, The Infamous Indonesian Fried Rice

Hello..this blog is dedicated to people who likes cooking, travelling and know what’s news in their life. Especially for you!

My name is Tina and I’m just an ordinary Indonesian old hag-oh sorry-woman. It’s very rude to call yourself old hag..hahahaha.

This blog is created for some reasons. I have watched so many Indonesian people on international cooking shows or culinary experts show, telling them that Indonesian cooking are ALL HARD-TO-COOK  cuisine. Well, I cannot simply say that Indonesian cuisine is easy. But most of our home cooking dishes are quite esy and simple. Even the spices are quite minimal. In this blog, I will present you my-hut-level kind of cooking. Simplicity- in Indonesian ways- is the spirit of this blog.

OK…for the simplicity-rationale, let’s skip to the recipe. This is the infamous Indonesian fried rice, Nasi Goreng. Nasi Goreng is just the Indonesian language for fried rice. It’s very simple, so simple it’s just need four ingredients.

My Super Simple Nasi Goreng

Main Ingredients :

a plate of cooked-rice

3 spoon of cooking oil (palm or coconut oil are preferred)

2 spoon of kecap manis (Indonesian sweet soy sauce)

Condiments :

Sliced tomato

Sliced cucumber

Fried egg or omelette

The Ground Spices :

2 cloves of garlic

2 tsp kosher salt or ordinary salt

2 pcs of fresh Piri-Piri (or you can replace it with bird eye chilli)

2 pcs of fresh Cayenne chili pepper

Why I called these as the ground Spices? There’s two basic techniques in Indonesian cooking : the first is grinding with stone-mortar and the second is slicing the spices. The first, usually is used when the spices are hard, and need crushing process to blend e.g : nutmeg, caraway, candlenut, and salt, they are difficult to be sliced, so it's a lot easier to grind them in stone-mortar. Most of Indonesian like fresh, tangy and strong aromatic spices (we rarely use herbs, except for kemangi or Lemon-basil), so we use the first more for slice-able ingredients too. 

I prefer the first one since it naturally blends all the spices taste and aroma into one complex combination. The chemical reaction in grinding tech. is already complicated and we don’t need to type those complex things! Just try it!

How to Cook :

1. Prepare the rice. Grind the ground spices (garlic, salt, piri-piri and cayenne) with stone-mortar or you can use a food processor or dry blender to grind it ( I never have it and never use it, so sorry..)
2. Heat the oil in the low-heat level and fry the ground spices until it becomes aromatic (use your nose, not your eyes). And beware of how Piri-Piri become so 'wild' when it is fried.
3. Then pour the rice, stir it thoroughly, until the spices blend perfectly with all part of the rice. Pour the kecap manis and stir it thoroughly once again. Remember that the temperature must be maintain at the low-heat level. 
4. Wait untikl it become aromatic and blend perfectly (just in case, the kecap manis' colour spread all over the rice, turning it into light brown). And it's done!

Well, good luck!

P.S: This recipe is super simple, so the taste of every spices and ingredients will affect the taste and aroma of the whole thing. Don't replace kecap manis with soyu (Japanese soy sauce) or even the Chinese one for better result.