Indonesian Mom Recipe – Semur Ayam

As mentioned throughout my previous blog posts, Indonesians are very fond of food. Semur Ayam is one of the most popular home-cooked meals in Indonesia. But what is Semur Ayam exactly? Ayam is chicken and Semur is Indonesian meat stew that is braised in thick gravy made out of sweet soy sauce and a garlic-onion-candlenut paste. 

Let’s take it step by step.

First off, here’s the list of ingredients you will need to prepare the dish:

• 1 kg Chicken
• 4-5 Bay Leaves
• 500g Potatoes
• 500g Carrots

To make the “base-paste” you need:

• 3 Onions
• 1 head of Garlic
• 15 Candlenuts (Kemiri)

These next ingredients are eyeballed, there is no real measurements and everything depends on how intense you want the taste of the spices to be:

• about 200ml Kecap Manis (Indonesian Sweet Soy Sauce)
• roughly 1 teaspoon Ground Nutmeg
• Optional: Ginger for extra flavor

& salt, pepper, and sugar to taste.

Making Semur Ayam is simple and straightforward, here are the instructions (and you can watch the full video here):

First, make the paste:

1. In a blender, add your onion, garlic, and candlenut with some oil
2. blend until it becomes a paste
3.  that’s it

This paste can also be used as a base for Nasi Goreng or Mie Goreng.

Moving on:

1. Add oil into a pot and wait until it’s hot.
2. Add your paste into the hot oil and stir, add the bay leaves, stir again until your whole kitchen smells beautiful and delicious. This part takes about 3-4 minutes.
3. Now add the Kecap Manis and mix until even.
4. Add the chicken and mix until covered.
5. Add the carrots and potatoes with some water to cover the pot.
6. Then, add some pepper, salt, and nutmeg to taste
7. Mix everything together.
8. Finally, reduce your heat and let the everything simmer until both the chicken, carrots, and potatoes are tender. This step takes about 30 minutes depending on how big your chicken, carrot and potato pieces are.
9. Last step is the taste test and adjust with salt/sugar/pepper as preferred.

Serve it with steamed white rice and garnish with fried onion!

Guten Appetit, Selamat Makan!

Let me know in the comments below, whether you’ve tried this dish or even the recipe on this post!

‘Til then.
Valerie