Peanut sauce

Peanut sauce is a tasty sauce made from ground roasted or fried peanuts. It is used in many dishes around the world, especially in Indonesian cuisine. People enjoy it with meat, vegetables, or as a salad dressing.

One popular way to use peanut sauce is with satay, small grilled skewers of meat. The sauce adds rich flavor to the dish. It is also often used as a dipping sauce for vegetables or dishes like gado-gado, a traditional Indonesian salad.

Ingredients

Peanut sauce has many recipes, each giving it different tastes and textures. The main ingredient is ground roasted peanuts, and sometimes people use peanut butter instead. Other common ingredients include coconut milk, soy sauce, tamarind, galangal, garlic, and spices like coriander seed or cumin. You might also find chili peppers, sugar, fried onion, and lemongrass in some recipes. The thickness of the sauce depends on how much water is added.

Regional

Indonesia

Peanuts were brought to Indonesia from the Americas by Spanish traders in the late 1500s. They grow well in the warm climate of Southeast Asia. In Indonesian cooking, peanuts are often roasted and chopped, used in dishes, marinades, and dipping sauces.

Bumbu kacang, or peanut sauce, is a key part of many Indonesian dishes like satay, gado-gado, and karedok. It is added to meats and vegetables for flavor, used as a dipping sauce, or mixed into salad dressings. Satay, a popular Southeast Asian street food, is usually served with peanut sauce. The sauce is made by combining fried peanuts with palm sugar, garlic, shallot, ginger, tamarind juice, lemon juice, lemongrass, salt, chilli, pepper, and kecap manis, then mixing with coconut milk or water. Indonesian peanut sauce is usually less sweet than the version from Thailand.

Netherlands

Peanut sauce came to the Netherlands from its history in Southeast Asia. Besides being used in Indonesian and Dutch-Indonesian dishes, it is also enjoyed with French fries at fast food places. A popular mix is French fries with mayonnaise and peanut sauce, sometimes with chopped onions and ketchup, called patatje oorlog. It is also used with baguette, bread, cucumber, or potatoes, and in a snack called satékroket.

Other countries

Peanut sauces similar to Indonesia’s are used in many places:

• In Malaysia, peanut sauces are part of the local cuisine, influenced by immigrants from Dutch East Indies.
• In Chinese cooking, a version of the sauce is used in Chaoshan-style hot pot.
• In Hong Kong, peanut sauce is used in dishes like satay beef noodles.
• In India, a spicy peanut sauce called groundnut chutney is served with breakfast foods like idli and dosa.
• In the Philippines, peanut sauce, called sarsa ng mani, is used for dipping satay and lumpia, and as a base for kare-kare.
• In Singapore, peanut sauce is enjoyed with rice vermicelli called satay bee hoon.
• In Vietnam, the sauce is called tương đậu phộng and is used in cuốn diếp, sometimes with hoisin sauce.