Southeast Asia's kebab descendant, likely adapted from Arab and Indian Muslim traders' kebabs by Javanese street cooks: small pieces of turmeric-marinated chicken, goat, or beef on bamboo sticks, grilled over coconut charcoal and sauced with sweet-spicy ground peanut. Indonesia alone counts dozens of regional sate styles.
Also known as: sate, saté, satai, sate ayam, sate kambing, satay ayam, chicken satay
Watch it made
Ingredients
- 700 g chicken thigh, in 2 cm pieces
- 2 lemongrass stalks (tender cores), plus 1 whole stalk for basting
- 3 shallots and 3 garlic cloves
- 2 tsp ground turmeric and 2 tsp ground coriander
- 25 g palm sugar
- 1 tsp salt and 30 ml oil
- 150 g roasted peanuts, ground (sauce)
- 200 ml coconut milk, 1 tbsp chili paste, 1 tbsp tamarind water (sauce)
- 16 bamboo skewers, soaked 30 min
- Cucumber chunks, raw shallot and ketupat or rice cakes
How to make it
- 1
Blitz lemongrass, shallots, garlic, turmeric, coriander, palm sugar, salt and oil into a paste and marinate the chicken 3 hours.
- 2
For the sauce, simmer ground peanuts with coconut milk, chili paste, tamarind and a little sugar until the oil rises to the top, then keep warm.
- 3
Thread the chicken without crowding the tip of each stick.
- 4
Grill over hot charcoal, fanning the coals and turning often, 7-9 minutes, brushing with oil using the bruised lemongrass stalk.
- 5
Serve the sticks over the sauce with cucumber, shallot and pressed rice.
Pro tip: Bash the spare lemongrass stalk into a frayed brush and baste with it all through the grilling; it mops, perfumes and bastes in one gesture, exactly as the satay men of Java and Malaysia do.
