Nasi goreng

• 1. Introduction

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  Nasi goreng, the Southeast Asian fried rice dish, was on the table in the dark hours before dawn on the 17th of August 1945. Sukarno, Mohammad Hatta and Ahmad Soebardjo were drafting the text that would proclaim Indonesian independence. They worked at the residence of Admiral Maeda, a high-ranking Japanese naval officer. It was the Muslim fasting month, so the three men ate nasi goreng as their sahur, the meal taken before the day's fast begins.

  The name simply means fried rice in Malay. Yet the plate that fed the drafters of a national founding document was built from cooked rice, a little oil, sweet soy sauce, shallots, garlic and shrimp paste. How does something so humble end up in the middle of history? Where did the idea of frying rice come from, and who still argues about it? Why does no cook agree on a single recipe? And how did the dish travel so far from the kitchens where it began?

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• 2. Leftover Rice

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  Chinese merchants, sailors and envoys were calling at ports across Java, Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, Borneo, Indochina and the Philippines from the time of the Tang dynasty, which ran from the 7th to the 10th centuries. Those harbours became meeting points where cooking, religion and language blended. Trade between China and the Indonesian archipelago flourished from the era of Srivijaya, around the 10th century, and grew more intense in the Majapahit era, around the 15th century. By then Chinese immigrants had begun to settle there and bring their food with them.

  Commentators suggest that Indonesian nasi goreng descends from Chinese fried rice, and that it began as a way to avoid waste. Chinese households favoured freshly cooked hot food, and throwing away uneaten food was taboo. So the previous day's rice was recooked in the morning. The writer Gregory Rodgers added a practical point. In a time before refrigeration, frying the rice may have stopped dangerous microbes from multiplying, while also saving precious food.

  Fried rice suited seafaring communities because it needed only basic equipment, a small amount of oil and whatever ingredients were at hand. It was easy to carry and relied on leftovers, which made it practical for travellers and settled families alike. Between the 10th and 19th centuries, large numbers of Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka and Teochew settlers came from southern China. They built Chinatowns and temples in Batavia, which is modern Jakarta, and in Semarang, Medan, Malacca, Penang, Singapore, Bangkok, Saigon and Manila. Others settled in smaller towns and rural areas linked to agriculture, mining and river trade.

  The stir-frying technique itself became increasingly popular in China during the Ming dynasty, from 1368 to 1644. In Indonesia, the noodle dish mie goreng appeared at the same time as that technique, which required a Chinese wok. Soy sauce has older roots, going back to China in the 2nd century. Sweet soy sauce, called kecap manis, was an Indonesian invention, made with a generous measure of local palm sugar. That sweetness would later colour most Indonesian versions of the dish.

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• 3. Disputed Roots

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  The writer Fadly Rahman, from Padjajaran University, has argued that no historical evidence proves nasi goreng is native to Indonesia. He offered a rival theory to the Chinese one. In his view the dish may have been inspired by pilaf, a Middle Eastern dish of rice cooked in seasoned broth.

  One regional recipe seems to support him. Betawi-style nasi goreng kambing, or goat fried rice, uses mutton or goat meat, a choice traditionally favoured by Arab Indonesians. It is cooked with rich spices and minyak samin, which is ghee. Those are all typical ingredients of Middle Eastern pilaf.

  Then there is the written record. An early 19th century Javanese work, the Serat Centhini, mentions a dish called sekul goreng. The culinary expert Harry Nazarudin cautions that this is not the fried rice known today. It was made without soy sauce, and it was not eaten as a single dish. Instead it was a kind of rice served alongside side dishes.

  The island of Java still holds two traditions of fried rice. The Sundanese gagrak style is savoury, while the Javanese style tends toward sweet. The sekul goreng of the Serat Centhini comes closest to the Sundanese version.

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• 4. Colonial Kitchens

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  In 1918, the newspaper Sinar Hindia published a serial story called Student Hidjo, written by Marco Kartodikoromo, and nasi goreng appeared in its pages. The dish had become part of what people called Indies culture under Dutch colonial rule. A Dutch cookbook of 1925, the Groot Nieuw Volledig Oost Indisch Kookboek, also mentions it. Trade between the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies carried the Indonesian style of nasi goreng further into the world.

  By the 19th century, colonial-era records describe fried rice as part of the daily diet in Javanese and Malay households. Its appeal was practical. Leftover rice could quickly become a full meal, often with eggs, small amounts of meat or salted fish. Late 19th and early 20th century cookbooks compiled for European households in the Dutch East Indies carried recipes for it. Dutch-Indonesian cookbooks of the early 20th century did the same, showing that the dish had entered both local and colonial kitchens.

  Portuguese, Dutch and British powers dominated the spice and commodity trade, and they shaped local cooking only indirectly. Fried rice itself remained mainly a Chinese tradition. But the wider circulation of soy sauce, chilli, pepper and nutmeg helped produce regional adaptations, and nasi goreng was the most notable.

  The records never tell the whole story. Fried rice kept being cooked in home kitchens and sold by street vendors, and people of every social class ate it. In British Malaya and the Straits Settlements, similar preparations were noted among Malay, Chinese and Indian Muslim communities alike.

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• 5. Anatomy of a Plate

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  A cook who wants real nasi goreng starts with rice made the night before. The texture of day-old rice is considered better, because freshly cooked rice can be too moist and soft to survive frying in a wok. At home, the dish is traditionally a breakfast. The flavour is aromatic, earthy and smoky, which sets it apart from other Asian fried rice.

  Beyond the rice, nasi goreng has at least three parts. There are the main ingredients, such as egg, shrimp, meat and cooking oil. There is the bumbu, the seasoning, built from garlic, shallot, salt and chilli. And there are the condiments. Typical seasonings also include spring onions, turmeric, palm sugar, kecap manis, shrimp paste, black pepper and fish sauce. Combining these in different ratios produces a myriad of flavours.

  The garnishes do real work. Bawang goreng, which is deep-fried shallots, adds crispness, as do crackers called kerupuk, usually emping or prawn crackers. Acar, a pickle of cucumber, shallots, carrot and small chillies in vinegar, cuts through the oil. Slices of fresh cucumber and tomato add freshness. A sunny-side-up egg or an omelette adds richness, and sambal supplies as much heat as the eater wants.

  On the street, that last choice becomes a conversation. Vendors push wheeled carts through residential neighbourhoods at night, and warungs sell nasi goreng beside fried noodles and noodle soup. The cook usually cooks each plate to order and asks how hot to make it: mild, medium, hot or extra hot. The heat depends on the amount of sambal used. The cook also asks whether the egg should be mixed in or fried whole. Add a fried egg and the plate is often called nasi goreng istimewa, or special fried rice.

  Now the dish has also reached supermarket shelves in Indonesia. Some brands sell bumbu nasi goreng, an instant seasoning paste meant for leftover rice. Convenience stores offer frozen portions that can be heated in a microwave.

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• 6. A Hundred Recipes

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  According to Dwi Larasatie, a culinary expert at Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia has 104 types of nasi goreng. She sorted them into three groups. Thirty-six have clearly known origins, and 59 developed in ways that cannot be traced to a place. The remaining 9 go beyond rice, adding noodles, barley, corn and similar ingredients. Java alone has 20 variants, including nasi goreng Betawi, Sunda, Jawa, Semarangan and Jawa Timuran.

  In most of Indonesia, ample kecap manis gives the rice a golden brown colour and a mildly sweet taste. In eastern Indonesia, in Sulawesi and Maluku, the sweet soy sauce is usually missing. Cooks use bottled tomato and chilli sauce instead, producing nasi goreng merah, or red fried rice, also called nasi goreng Makassar after the capital of South Sulawesi. The anchovy version from Medan skips kecap manis altogether, so it looks pale, like Chinese fried rice or Japanese chahan. Indonesians even give foreign fried rice the same name, calling Chinese fried rice nasi goreng Hongkong and yakimeshi nasi goreng Jepang.

  Across the strait, Malaysia documents a wide range. Nasi goreng kampung is made with anchovies and water spinach, and nasi goreng belacan is seasoned with fermented shrimp paste. Others include nasi goreng kunyit, coloured with turmeric, and nasi goreng Pattaya, which is wrapped in an omelette. Nasi goreng USA combines chicken, prawns and squid. Nasi goreng mamak shows Indian Muslim influence through its curry spices.

  In Singapore, hawker centres present three different approaches. Malay vendors cook sambal-based recipes, Indian Muslim stalls serve spicier rice with fried meats or curries, and Chinese stalls use soy sauce. Brunei has nasi goreng belutak, made with a traditional beef sausage, and nasi goreng pulau Brunei, known as floating fried rice. Cooks there also use corned beef or the Borneo olive, buah dabai. In the Malay-speaking southern Thai provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat, the dish is spiced more strongly and often comes with fried chicken, cucumber or pickled vegetables.

  Still, some elements cross every border. These include the word kampung, meaning village, shrimp paste (called terasi in Indonesian and belacan in Malay), sambal, salted fish, and the trick of wrapping fried rice in an omelette.

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• 7. Across Oceans

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  In Suriname, the single word nasi usually means a fried rice dish, which is not how Indonesians use it. The dish arrived with Javanese people who migrated there during the Dutch colonial period. Surinamese nasi is typically served with moksi meti, a combination of roasted meats, or with roasted chicken, both borrowed from Chinese-Surinamese cooking. It comes with strips of fried omelette, atjar pickles and bakabana, which is fried plantain. Unlike in Indonesia, the meat is cooked separately and added afterwards. Soy sauce gives colour and flavour, though some cooks swap in tomato paste.

  In Sri Lanka, nasi goreng arrived through the Sri Lankan Malay community. Cooks there sauté day-old rice with soy sauce and oyster sauce, along with ginger, garlic and shallots. They add shrimp, chicken or eggs, and garnish with fried eggs and fresh vegetables.

  The Netherlands holds the most surprising evolution. Indo-Dutch migrants brought the dish, and Indonesian food is common there through historical colonial ties. Take-away nasi goreng is sold in toko Asian grocery shops and supermarkets, where several brands of spice mix sit beside krupuk. Chinese take-aways have adapted it too, spicing it in Cantonese style. In Flanders, the name nasi goreng is often used for any Asian-style fried rice. One Dutch Indies version, still eaten in the Netherlands, is made with butter and bacon or other pork.

  The Dutch have even turned the dish into a snack. The nasischijf, which means nasi disk, is a deep-fried fast food of nasi goreng sealed inside a breadcrumb crust.

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• 8. Politics and Pop Culture

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  At the 1964 New York World's Fair, the Indonesian Theater Restaurant inside the Indonesian pavilion put nasi goreng on its menu. The dish was presented as the quintessential food of an Indonesian family. Howard Palfrey Jones, the United States ambassador to Indonesia in the last years of Sukarno's reign, wrote about it in his memoir Indonesia: The Possible Dream. He praised the nasi goreng cooked by Hartini, one of Sukarno's wives, as the most delicious he had ever tasted.

  After independence, Indonesians came to treat nasi goreng as an unofficial national dish. It is often called the most democratic of dishes, since no rigid recipe stops anyone from doing what they like with it. In 2018, the Indonesian government made the status official. It named nasi goreng a national dish alongside soto, sate, rendang and gado-gado. Malaysia officially recognises it as part of its national culinary heritage, and Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore all feature it in tourism promotion.

  In Indonesian politics, nasi goreng has become a language of its own. People speak of diplomasi nasi goreng, or nasi goreng diplomacy, and politik nasi goreng, or nasi goreng politics, for lobbying done over a plate. Megawati Sukarnoputri popularised the term in July 2019, when she hosted Prabowo Subianto and served him nasi goreng. Afterward she said: "Fortunately for women politicians, there is a tool to melt men's hearts, which is called "nasi goreng politics", which turns out to be effective".

  The dish has also turned up in entertainment. In February 1973, Philip Proctor and Peter Bergman of The Firesign Theatre released the album TV or Not TV, on which a character named Nasi Goreng sings a song to introduce himself. Tante Lien recorded "Geef Mij Maar Nasi Goreng" in 1979, a whimsical song about the craving of repatriated people of Indo descent in the Netherlands for Indonesian food. In 2011, an online poll of 35,000 voters run by CNN International placed Indonesian-style nasi goreng second on its World's 50 Most Delicious Foods list, behind rendang. A Japanese comedy series of 2016, Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, Nasi Goreng Division, took its title from the dish. That same year, during a concert in Indonesia, the Australian band 5 Seconds of Summer dedicated to the country a song called "Nasi Goreng".

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