Indonesian satay sauce free from dairy, peanuts and soy

Indonesian food is very popular in Holland and my family and I eat it a lot. Especially satay (or saté). Satay is made from small pieces of meat on a skewer, served with satay sauce. For vegan eggplant and jackfruit are very nice. The sauce is made from peanuts, soy sauce and sambal (Indonesian hot sauce). I am allergic to peanuts and don’t eat soy or gluten. So I make my own satay sauce from cashew nuts and coconut aminos.

Fan of Indonesian flavours and following a soyfree and glutenfree diet? Take a look at my other Indonesian recipes:

• Kecap manis (sweet soysauce)
• Sambal badjak (Indonesian fried hot sauce)
• Sayur lodeh
• Nasi goreng (Indonesian fried rice)
• Gado gado

What is Indonesion satay?

You can make satay with every kind of meat. But most often chicken is used. Pieces of chicken are marinated in sweet soy sauce, called kecap. Then you string the meat on sticks and you grill these skewers. Almost every Dutch BBQ will have some form of satay skewers on the menu.

What is satay sauce?

You usually serve satay skewers with a spicy and umami peanut sauce. You serve this sauce on the side or you immerse the skewers in the sauce.

An authentic satay sauce consists of milk (whole milk or sometimes coconut), peanuts, different kinds of sambal and kecap. Sambal oelek is just very fine, raw red pepper. That is combined with a darker, fried sambal: badjak (red pepper fried with sugar, onions, ginger and other spices) or brandal (extra hot). Kecap is cooked soy sauce with spices and sugar. So it’s thicker, deeper in taste and more sweet: a bit caramel like.

Dairy, peanut and soyfree!?

I am the biggest satay sauce fan there is. So I make it a lot. But, I don’t eat white sugar, milk, peanuts or soy…

Impossible? That word is not in my dictionary! So I replace peanuts for cashews, milk for oat or coconutmilk and kecap for coconut aminos and coconut blossom sugar. And then I add my own spices and make my own sambal.

Bumbu

The start of most Indonesian dishes is a bumbu. A bumbu is a paste that you get by pounding fresh spices in a mortar. That can be a lot if work, so I often use the small kitchen aid that I bought with my immersion blender.

You fry the paste in coconut oil. Frying is essentieel to get a deep taste and let the ingredients caramelize. You fry the bumbu after roasting the dry spices, and before you add the other (main) ingredients like meat or vegetables and fluids.

Kemiri nuts

Kemiri, or candle nuts, are a typical kind of South-East Asian nuts. They look a bit like large, dark and somewhat ‘old’ macademia or hazelnuts. The taste is quite distinct and nothing like any other nut. They taste like Asia. Raw kemiri nuts are not edible and even poisonous. Therefor, usually they are roasted before use.

Even in Holland kemiri nuts can be hard to find though. So if you don’t know what they are or i you don’t have them: just leave them out.

Fat & oils

A bit of coconut oil is needed to fry the bumbu. It’s almost impossible to get the same taste by only cooking the ingredients in the sauce.

Ferment

In this recipe I use coconut aminos and coconut flower sugar to replace kecap manis. Be aware that coconut aminos are fermented. In the MM protocol you try to minimise ferment. The coconut aminos in my opinion, is essential for the sauce. So leaving that out would compromise the Indonesian flavors to much.

Fish sauce

Usually saté sauce is made with fishsauce or trassie (fermented shrimp paste). But I have become hesitant to use those. I learned that fishsauce contains al lot of heavy metals. Ads shrimp are usually farmed.

If you do use fishsauce, be sure to buy real fish sauce. It’s supposed to consist of just slowly fermented anchovies. But usually, in cheap sauces you buy in the supermarket, the fermentation is accelerated by the use of enzymes or even chemicals. And then the lack of flavour is compensated with additives and sugar. A pure fish sauce doesn’t have any additives. My favorite fish sauce is (or was) Red Boat fish sauce.

Paleo & red peppers

Red peppers are nightshades. In a strict Paleo diet you have to avoid nightshades.

But a lot of people on a Paleo diet (occasionally) do eat red peppers. And sate sauce is actually supposed be a bit to quite spicy. It is possible though to make the sauce without red pepper. So make your own choices!