Spicy kecap sauce (soy sauce)

If you are looking for a spicy, sweet-sour sauce for over meat or fish, do not search anymore. This is the one. This hot soy sauce by cook book writer Beb Vuyk is delicious. We eat it today with pork chops. It’s like winter in the tropics… something like that. 😉

This sauce is made from kecap manis (super sweet soy sauce), lemon juice, chili pepper, onions and garlic. Of course you can make your sauce as spicy as you like it. Always try the chili pepper before using it. Every pepper is different.

Spicy kecap sauce II #463 translated from Beb Vuyk’s Groot Indonesisch kookboek, page 376.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon of chopped onions
1 chopped garlic clove
1 chopped chili pepper unseeded
2 tablespoons of kecap (soy sauce)
1 tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice
1 tablespoon of oil

Rub onions, garlic and chili pepper together. Sauté this in hot oil, and keep rubbing the spice mix in the oil. Finish with the soy sauce and the vinegar or lemon juice. When this sauce is served with fish, the herbs can be sautéed in the leftover oil from in which the fish is fried.

What do you need?

I use super sweet soy sauce (Kecap manis ABC, Heinz). This super sweet soy sauce fits well with the strong lemon juice.

The bok choy in the picture is not necessary for this sauce, but it’s for dinner tonight. ( I stir fry the bok choy in big chunks in hot oil with garlic and salt, nothing else. That’s how we like it best ;-).

For the spicy kecap sauce, I use a dried pepper, because I have some left. A fresh is works fine too. Test every pepper before use, because each pepper, dried or fresh, is hot differently.

The bumbu

I take the seeds out of the peppers and the ‘hairs’ the seeds grow in – that’s the spicy part. I chop the pepper into small pieces and add it to the onions and garlic in a mortar or cobek.

 The juices come out of the herbs and it already smells amazing. I make sure the spice mix is tender enough, but not super fine. When there is still some texture the sweet kecap can stick to the onions better.

I sauteé the mix in a tablespoon of hot oil until the onions turn yellow.

Now I lower the heat and add two tablespoons of my sweet soy sauce, along with a tablespoon of lemon juice. I stir the sauce shortly and immediately pour it into a bowl. Make sure your sauce does not burn.

I taste my sauce. Maybe it needs some extra kecap or spicyness. I think my sauce needs an extra few drops of lemon juice. Then it is perfectly sour, spicy and sweet 😉 all together.

The dark sauce quickly becomes lighter as the lemon whitens the soy sauce. Now it has a beautiful chestnut color.

It looks like a small amount of sauce, but it is not. This spicy kecap sauce is full of flavor, so a little bit over fish or meat is enough.  We pour it over our pork chops tonight. It sticks perfectly. Enak sekali!