Bumbu Dasar (Indonesian Basic Spice Paste)

Every culture has its basic traditional recipes. Same as the Italians who have their basic spaghetti sauce, Indonesian also have a basic spice paste that is need to know how to prepare. It is called basic because it is the seasoning bases of almost all Indonesian dishes.

Well, as an Indonesian, the basic recipe for Indonesian is a spice paste recipe. What we call bumbu dasar or spice paste is used in a lot of our traditional cooking. There has been many variations to this spice paste recipe. The core ingredients to any basic spice paste recipe has to include shallots and garlic. With that, you can pretty much add any other spice or aromatics to suit your needs and taste buds. 

To make basic spice paste, actually you should really pound all ingredients using a mortar and pestle. It is pretty time consuming and labour intensive, but the flavours, aroma and paste that ensues is definitely worth it. Until now, my grandmothers and my mom still using traditional mortar and pestle when grounded the spice. Using a food processor/blender will cut out the preparation time but it won’t generate the same flavours as a pounded spice paste. Most of my time in kitchen I use mortar and pestle, but if I made in such a huge amount of spice to ground I will use food processor instead of that traditional way. You can use which one that you feel comfort. 

If you using a blender, the order of processing the spices is much the same as using a mortar, but in some cases we might need to add some liquid to keep the blades of the machine turning during the blending process. The liquid could be oil if the spice paste needs to be fried or either coconut milk, stock or water if the spice paste is to be simmered.

Basically,  there are 3 variations of basic spice paste and it varies depends on the colour of the paste. They are White Basic Spice Paste, Yellow Basic Spice Paste, and Red Basic Spice Paste. Each paste become seasoning of different Indonesian dishes. For my Indonesian friends, I add a table in this post of different use of these 3 variations of basic spice paste.

Depending on what you are cooking, you can add the appropriate ingredients to it. For example, if you were planning on making Opor Ayam (Indonesian Chicken in Coconut Gravy), you would need to add in and pound some coriander seed, pepper powder, and lesser galangal. The possibilities is up to your choice.

In this post, I’ll show you one the recipes which suit me well between some of recipes that I have ever tried before. I got the recipe from "Resep Favorit D'ez Kitchen di Dunia Maya" by R. A Estherlita Suryopitro with some modification. I usually made this basic spice paste when I planned to be busy with some of work and don't have long time to be in the kitchen. Like now, it is Ramadhan, fasting month for Muslim. I made spice paste stock for a month. Using this easy method I feel more practical when preparing food for my family.

Bumbu Dasar Putih

(Indonesian Basic White Spice Sauce)

Ingredients:

• 200 grams shallots
• 100 grams cloves garlic
• 75 grams ginger
• 25 grams candlenuts (toasted before for better flavour)
• Cooking oil

Directions:

• If you use a mortar and pestle, the order to be followed when grinding spice paste ingredients is the hard items first, candle-nuts and ginger. You can scraped the ginger to make the grinding process easier. Once all of these are quite smooth, then add ingredients that are full of moisture, such as shallots and garlic.  
• If you use a food processor just blend all the ingredients until smooth. 
• Stir fry the paste with some cooking oil. Heat up until the water that comes out when you grinding the spice dissolves. Turn off the heat and leave the paste cold.
• While waiting the paste cold, sterilize the jar that you want to use to keep the paste (I suggest using glass jar such as mason jars). Sterilize it in boiling water for 15 minutes. 
• After the paste cold, transfer it into the mason jars. For one recipe in here I use the 16 oz Regular Mouth Ball Mason Jars. Keep it in chiller or freeze it.

*****

Bumbu Dasar Kuning

(Indonesian Basic Yellow Spice Sauce)

Ingredients:

• 200 grams shallots
• 100 grams cloves garlic
• 150 grams turmeric roots (toasted for better flavour and colour)
• 2 tsp ground turmeric powder (add if you feel the colour is not too yellow)
• 75 grams ginger
• 25 grams candlenuts (toasted before for better flavour)
• 4 Indonesian bay leaves (Daun Salam)
• 2 stalk lemon grass
• 2 kaffir lime leaves
• Cooking oil

Directions:

• If you use a mortar and pestle, the order to be followed when grinding spice paste ingredients is the hard items first, candle-nuts, turmeric and ginger. You can scraped the ginger and turmeric to make the grinding process easier. Once all of these are quite smooth, then add ingredients that are full of moisture, such as shallots and garlic.  
• If you use a food processor just blend all the ingredients until smooth. 
• Stir fry the paste with some cooking oil. Add Indonesian bay leaves, kaffir lime leaves, and lemon grass. Heat up until the water that comes out when you grinding the spice dissolves. Turn off the heat and leave the paste cold.
• While waiting the paste cold, sterilize the jar that you want to use to keep the paste (I suggest using glass jar such as mason jars). Sterilize it in boiling water for 15 minutes. 
• After the paste cold, transfer it into the mason jars. For one recipe in here I use the 16 oz Regular Mouth Ball Mason Jars. Keep it in chiller or freeze it

*****

Bumbu Dasar Merah

(Indonesian Basic Red Spice Sauce)

Ingredients:

• 160 grams shallots
• 80 grams cloves garlic
• 60 grams ginger
• 20 grams candlenuts (toasted before for better flavour)
• 8 fresh red chilli
• 4 dried red chilli (to make the taste more spicy and the colour more red) - optional
• 1 tbs fermented shrimp paste 
• 4 medium sized tomatoes, diced
• 4 Indonesian bay leaves (Daun Salam)
• 2 stalk lemon grass
• Cooking oil

Directions:

• If you use a mortar and pestle, the order to be followed when grinding spice paste ingredients is the hard items first, candle-nuts, turmeric and ginger. You can scraped the ginger and turmeric to make the grinding process easier. Once all of these are quite smooth, then add ingredients that are full of moisture, such as shallots, garlic, red chilli and tomatoes. If you use dried red chilli make sure to soaked it before grind it. 
• If you use a food processor just blend all the ingredients until smooth. 
• Stir fry the paste with some cooking oil. Add Indonesian bay leaves and lemon grass. Heat up until the water that comes out when you grinding the spice dissolves. Turn off the heat and leave the paste cold.
• While waiting the paste cold, sterilize the jar that you want to use to keep the paste (I suggest using glass jar such as mason jars). Sterilize it in boiling water for 15 minutes. 
• After the paste cold, transfer it into the mason jars. For one recipe in here I use the 16 oz Regular Mouth Ball Mason Jars. Keep it in chiller or freeze it.