A great dip – unfortunately often adulterated in restaurants, often with peanut butter. However, please don’t use it. Good Kuah Kacang, authentic satay peanut sauce, has fresh, roasted peanuts, texture and some crunch. This sauce goes together with chicken satay or also other varietes.
I know three different types of satay sauces: Indonesian, Malay, and what is served in restaurants in the West.
I personally like Malay satay, or sate (Malay), a little better than Indonesian, but that’s a matter of taste.
Unfortunately, I have never found decent satay sauce in a restaurant in Europe, so I stopped ordering it. Also in many recipes online you can always find peanut butter, even on BBC Good Food… 🙁 I personally don’t like peanut butter anyway and it doesn’t belong in satay sauce at all. Freshly roasted and crushed peanuts add flavor and a great texture. If you are making satay sauce from fresh peanuts for the first time: the result is not a thin sauce, but rather sticky.
If you want to surprise your friends with something special at the barbecue, this is the way to go. Unless your friends are allergic or vegetarians (although the latter can eat the sauce) :-). Serve it together with my chicken satay or other satay varietes.
The quantity
I always use authentic original recipe sources. What is often a bit difficult is to estimate how much to prepare. It must also justify the effort. In the past, I have often doubled the amounts, only to find out afterwards that I had made far too much. With this recipe I was then somewhat unsure, since it asked for 2 kg of peanuts. For a sauce….
That was clearly out of the question. But my wife said I should not reduce too much and still prepare half. With the result that now I have a whole freezer full of satay sauce. So, if you eat satay every night, go ahead and up the quantities again. Otherwise, make the amount below based on 250g of peanuts, or 500g for a big barbecue.
Why would anyone make the sauce with 2 kilos of peanuts anyway? A restaurant…, using my brain it is actually clear that their quantities are then a bit larger than the need for at home.
The author of the recipe I used has a restaurant in Kuala Lumpur for kampung cuisine (kampung means village, so simple, rural cuisine).
The ingredients
Often you find in recipes the hint to replace galangal with ginger. Sure, you can do it, but then it is no longer the original. At least in big cities you can get galangal in most Asian stores. It is worth, getting it if you can.
With the chilies I see this less critical. You can also soak dried chilies (as indicated in the original recipe) and use them. They don’t have to be Birds Eye chilies. But they should be red, not green chilies.
With lemongrass, you often only get the green leaves here in India, but you should use the stems for this recipe. Please do not use dried lemongrass, it’s lost the whole aroma.
Instead of palm sugar you can also use brown sugar. But then please use a bit less, because it tastes sweeter than palm sugar.
Authentic Malaysian peanut satay sauce – Kuah Kacang
Equipment
- Blender
Ingredients
For the paste
- 250 g peanuts
- ½ onion
- ½ stalk lemongrass
- 1 clove garlic chopped
- ¼ in galangal grated
- 1 red birds eye chili
- 1 Tbsp oil
For the sauce
- 15 ml tamarind extract
- 250 ml water
- 60 g palm sugar
- salt to taste
Instructions
The spice paste
- Roast the peanuts and remove the skin if necessary.
- Grind the peanuts coarsely and set aside.
- Peel and grate the galangal root with a vegetable grater. Don't just put it in the blender, it's too hard for blender blades.
- Chop the onion, garlic and lemongrass into coarse pieces.
- Put the grated galangal root, onion, chilies (without seeds), garlic and lemongrass in a blender and mix everything.
- Now fry this mixture in oil in a large pan over medium heat until everything is blended together.
The Sauce
- Now add water, palm sugar, tamarin extract and ground peanuts and stir well.
- Let it simmer in the pan over low heat, stirring, until the nuts have softened and the sauce thickens.
- Season the sauce with salt.
Please rate my recipe before you leave 🙂:
Not to be missed, the original source of the recipe by chef Dato’ Ismail Ahmad. Cooked with love on From zero to curry.
