Gado-Gado (Indonesian Salad with Peanut Dressing)

Gado-Gado (Indonesian Salad with Peanut Dressing) is another popular Indonesian meal that you cannot miss when you visit the country. You can think of it as an Indonesian version of salad with peanut sauce dressing. “Gado” itself means “to mix”. So, the proper way to eat gado-gado is to have all the vegetables mixed and coated really well with the peanut sauce.

There are too many versions of gado-gado. This is because you can be very creative as to what you want to put into this dish. Cabbage, long green bean, thin rice noodle, fried tofu, boiled egg, cracker, you name it. I find that the main key ingredients for gado-gado is the peanut sauce dressing. Without it, you would not call it Gado-Gado (Indonesian Salad with Peanut Dressing). Oh, another thing is that most of the vegetables should be blanched or steamed.

Also, with Gado-Gado (Indonesian Salad with Peanut Dressing), you can be very flexible on the quantity of vegetables. If you like bean sprout, you can add more of it or more of cabbage if you like. The key is to have a perfect balance between the amount of vegetables and the peanut sauce dressing. I like to have more peanut sauce dressing in my gado-gado, so the recipe below might be on the ‘creamier’ side. You can add more vegetables if you prefer lighter flavor. Nowadays, it is so convenient that you can buy the pre-made gado-gado peanut sauce. This will save you a lot of time in making the dish.

Tips: You can replace palm sugar with brown sugar (at least for this recipe, as I didn’t find much of a different using the two). 

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch long green bean – cut into 2 inches long
• 1 cup cabbage – cut into small rectangular shape
• 2 boiled egg – cut into wedges
• 1 cup spinach
• ½ medium-sized Chayote – julienned
• 1 cup bean sprout
• 1 medium-sized potato – boiled and cut into cube-shaped
• Water to boil

For Peanut Sauce:

• 3 serrano chili
• ¼ cup palm sugar
• 2 ½ cup roasted peanut – discard the skin (if any)
• 5 cloves garlic
• 2 cup (500 ml) coconut milk
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 3 tablespoons tamarind juice
• Salt

Directions:

For Peanut Sauce:

• Put in the roasted peanuts in a blender until it blends well – powdery like. If you like the crunchy texture of the peanut, then blend coarsely. Set aside.
• In the blender, put in garlic, palm sugar, chili, and tamarind juice. Let’s call it “A”.
• Pre-heat vegetable oil a pan in a medium heat. Put in the blended mixture “A” and stir it until it is fragrant.
• Add the roasted peanut, a dash of salt, and coconut milk. Stir it until it is boiled.
• Once it is boiled. Set aside. The peanut sauce is ready.

For the veggies and serving:

• Boil the water in a medium heat pot. After the water is boiled, blanched or steamed long green, cabbage, spinach, bean sprout and chayote.
• Organized the blanched or steamed vegetables above into a plate or bowl.
• Put the egg above it and pour the peanut sauce* over.
• Mixed them well.