The ultimate peanut sauce recipe to share with the best gado gado
I just realized to my ultimate horror that I never shared this recipe for the ultimate home made peanut sauce or satay sauce with you here… Tom shared his meatballs filled with peanut sauce on wednesday and I than got a comment from Cheese & Chinese that they have a love for peanut sauce etc. God, this is becoming a long story. Anyway, end of the day it dawned on me that I had shared this gado gado recipe on my Dutch site but never here.
And I had to immediately rectify that because this IS – by far – the best satay sauce recipe you’ll ever come across. Seriously. The reason we made this was that I wanted to do a gado gado recipe. I’ve had many delicious onces when we were in Asia but never tasted a really good one here in the Netherlands. Now obviously; gado gado is nothing more than cooked veggies so the element that makes or breaks this dish is the sauce.
We had attempted to make the ultimate peanut sauce before and failed, so I had to ask my friend Esmee (who has Indonesian roots) for help. And she delivered… The recipe does have a few steps but hey you have to do something for the ultimate recipe right? That makes it even more satisfying I always think.
And once you have this, making your perfect gado gado is a breeze. You won’t be sorry!
The ultimate peanut sauce recipe to share with the best gado gado
Ingredients
Vegetables
- Broccoli
- Cauliflower
- Cucumber
- Green beans
- Carrots
- bean sprouts
- bamboo shoots
- eggs
For the peanut sauce
- 3 Asian red shallots regular red onion is an option too of course
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 1/2 tsp shrimp paste
- small pcs of sereh / lemon grass
- 2 big red chili peppers including seeds
- sunflower oil to bake in
- 1/2 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp ground cilantro
- 400 ml water approx.
- 5 large tbsp peanutbutter with pieces
- 1/2 tbsp palm sugar or gula djawa
- 1 tbsp ketjap manis
- 2 tsp dried chili flakes
- 2 tsp sambal badjak
- bit of lime juice
Instructions
- Cook all vegetables for your gado separately and no too well done. It's ok if they still have a little crunch. Grate the carrot and pour boiling water over it. Leave to drain. Also blanch the bean sprouts shortly but cook the green beans a little longer. Set aside to cool.
- Cut the onion and the garlic and add this together with the sereh, shrimp paste and the red peppers in a pestle and mortar. Mix until you have a coarse paste. Heat the sunflower oil in a large saucepan. Bake everything until it starts to smell really nicely but make sure it doesn't burn.
- Add the cumin and the cilantro and bake this together briefly.
- Pour the water in and puree with a stick blender until smooth. Add the peanutbutter, palm sugar, ketjap manis, dried chili flakes, sambal and the lime and stir everything together till it has the desired thickness. If it is too thin add more peanut butter.
- Your peanut sauce is done when the oil starts to separate a bit. You can see this when you look at the pictures.
- Serve the gado gado on a large plate with all vegetables arranged. Add the peanut sauce in the middle and serve with boiled eggs.
Notes
We used sambal badjak here because that is what we had, but feel free to use another sambal.
Disclaimer
The nutritional values above are calculated per portion. The details are based on standard nutritional tables and do not constitute a professional nutritional advice.
That looks so delicious! I am a sucker for that kind of food and for anything peanut.
Cheers,
Rosa
And it is indeed delicious Rosa. Love this sauce!
It’s amazing how people can bond over a love for peanut sauce! It just brings people together! π Adding lemongrass sounds super delicious and I think next time we will have to also include the shrimp paste and cumin in our sauce, it sounds like a great idea. Thanks for activating my peanut sauce craving again, this just sounds too good!
I know right? Who doesn’t love peanut sauce?
A fair try to make “the best peanut sauce” …
Still, for a true Indonesian native cook, it is bad to use “peanut butter” because of the extra ingredients. Way better to use roasted peanuts and then grind them up or use the Adams brand peanut butter that does not have the extra ingredients!!
Ah but we have a peanut butter here that has no other ingredients but just the peanuts… π So it’s 100% pure peanut!