Bumbu
Spice
Top 10 pairings
Bumbu is the foundational wet spice paste of Indonesian cooking — a pounded or blended mixture of aromatics, most often shallot, garlic, candlenut, galangal, turmeric and fresh chilli, fried in oil until fragrant to build the flavour base of a dish. Rather than a single recipe it is a whole technique and family of pastes, sautéed first so that curries, fried rice, satays, soups and stews across the Nusantara archipelago all begin from a cooked aromatic foundation.
Picking a good onedrag
Just fried, dark and glossy, the aromatics loudSour and fizzing, or flat under stale oil
Under oilEveryday jarThe make-ahead state cooks keep on hand. Leave the oil film over the top, take it with a clean dry spoon, and keep it cold.
Smell the pasteClearly cooked and aromatic, but you have to put your face to the jar to get the whole picture
Colour and glossStill true to that base colour, a shade duller, oil standing bright at the surface
The oil and the lidOil partly stirred through; the surface a little dry where it has been spooned from
Grind and labelBlender-smooth - many cooks prefer the pounded texture, but that is preference, not a fault