Name: Gado-Gado
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 40 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Indonesian
Ingredients: 200 g green beans, trimmed; 200 g cabbage, shredded; 200 g beansprouts; 150 g spinach or water spinach; 2 potatoes, boiled and sliced; 250 g firm tofu, cubed and fried; 200 g tempeh, sliced and fried; 4 hard-boiled eggs, halved; 1 cucumber, sliced; 250 g roasted peanuts; 4 garlic cloves; 4 red chillies; 3 tbsp palm sugar; 3 tbsp tamarind paste; 2 tbsp kecap manis; 1 tsp terasi, toasted; 350 ml hot water or coconut milk; 2 tbsp neutral oil; 1 ½ tsp fine sea salt; Prawn crackers (krupuk); Crispy fried shallots; Lime wedges

Gado-Gado

Blanched and raw vegetables, tofu, tempeh and boiled egg under a warm peanut sauce, with prawn crackers on top. Indonesia's national salad, and a complete meal in a bowl.

40 min total Serves 4 servings Easy

Each vegetable is blanched for its own precise time and refreshed in cold water, which keeps colours bright and textures distinct rather than uniformly soft. The sauce is served warm and slightly loose so it coats rather than clings, which is how it reaches every component.

Gado-Gado, in preparation
Photograph credit: Gado gado at Indo Cafe by roland · CC0 1.0 · Flickr

The Method for Gado-Gado

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Blanch each vegetable separately in boiling salted water and refresh in iced water: green beans 3 minutes, cabbage 2 minutes, beansprouts 30 seconds, spinach 30 seconds. Drain each very well.
Fry the tofu and tempeh in hot oil until golden and crisp on all sides, about 4 minutes each. Drain and salt lightly.
For the sauce, blend the peanuts to a coarse meal.
Blend the garlic, chillies and terasi to a paste and fry it in the oil for 5 minutes until fragrant and darkened.
Add the ground peanuts, palm sugar, tamarind, kecap manis and salt, then whisk in the hot water gradually.
Simmer 8 minutes until thick but pourable — it should coat a spoon and drop off it easily.
Taste and adjust: it wants to be savoury, sour and only mildly sweet.
Arrange all the vegetables, tofu, tempeh, potato, cucumber and egg on a large platter in distinct groups.
Pour the warm sauce generously over the top, scatter with crackers (optional) and fried shallots, and serve with lime.

Related guide: Ingredient substitutions.

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Worth Getting Right

Blanch separately and refresh. Cooking everything in one pot gives a grey, uniform salad.
The sauce should be pourable, not stiff. Loosen with hot water right before serving.
It is meant to be eaten at room temperature with a warm sauce, not chilled.

Swaps and Variations

If coconut is a problem, a cooking cream (dairy or plant-based) can stand in for the coconut milk in a sauce; the dish will lose the coconut flavour and taste noticeably different.
Dried chilli flakes can stand in for the red chillies. Heat varies a great deal between chillies and between jars, so start with a small pinch and add more to taste.
Lemon is the everyday swap for lime in this kind of dish — the acidity plays the same role even though the flavour is not identical.

Serve It With

Prawn crackers and lontong · Iced tea or a cold beer · Sambal on the side for heat

Keeping and Reheating

Sauce keeps 1 week refrigerated. Prepare vegetables the same day and dress only when serving.

What's in a Serving

No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.

Gluten-Free option Dairy-Free

Gluten-free when served without the prawn crackers.