Rawon (East Javanese Black Beef Soup)

Name: Rawon (East Javanese Black Beef Soup)
Total time: 2 h 30 min
Yield: 6
Cuisine: Indonesian
Ingredients: 800 g Beef shin or chuck; 2.5 L Water; 6 Keluak nuts (kluwek); 120 g Shallots; 25 g Garlic; 4 Candlenuts; 15 g Fresh turmeric; 15 g each Ginger and galangal; 3 Red chilies; 2 tsp Ground coriander; 2 Lemongrass stalks, bruised; 4 and 3 Kaffir lime leaves and salam leaves; 1 tbsp Palm sugar; Short bean sprouts (tauge pendek); Fried shallots, sambal, lime and steamed rice

A soup the colour of strong coffee, blackened by fermented keluak nuts, with soft cubes of beef and a fistful of raw bean sprouts dropped in at the last second.

Source

Recipe by Javanese home kitchens · 🏺 Traditional · Javanese household cooking

Traditional dish · East Java — A dish with no single author. The cited article places rawon in East Java (Surabaya, Malang, Ponorogo), notes a mention in a 901 CE Javanese inscription, and identifies the black keluak nut as the seasoning that gives the soup its colour. The steps here are our own writing, not a reproduction.

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Lily izzana Lennardy Diandra Cappelut

⏱ 150 min🍽 6 servings🔥 460 kcal🇮🇩 Indonesia🌶️

HalalDairy-freeGluten-free

Steps

Simmer the beef in the water for about an hour, skimming the foam off in the first ten minutes, until it is starting to soften.
Crack the keluak nuts, scrape the black paste out and soak it in a few spoons of warm water for 10 minutes.
💡 Taste a tiny amount of the paste. It should be earthy and faintly bitter like dark chocolate. If it tastes sharply sour or smells fermented-off, throw that nut out — one bad keluak ruins the whole pot.
Blend the shallots, garlic, candlenuts, turmeric, ginger, galangal, chilies and the soaked keluak paste into a dark, smooth paste.
Fry the paste in oil over medium heat with the coriander, lemongrass, lime leaves and salam leaves for 6–8 minutes.
💡 It will look and smell unpromising — muddy and heavy. Keep going until the oil separates out around the edges; that is the point at which raw bitterness turns into depth.
Stir the fried paste into the beef pot with the palm sugar and a good spoonful of salt. The broth will turn from brown to near-black.
Simmer gently for another hour, uncovered, until the beef gives way easily to a spoon and the broth has reduced by about a quarter.
Taste and adjust for salt. It should be savoury and deep with only a hint of sweetness.
Ladle into bowls, drop a handful of raw bean sprouts on each, scatter fried shallots over and serve with rice, sambal and a wedge of lime.

💡 Tips

Keluak is the one thing you cannot improvise. Without it this is just a beef soup — there is no substitute that gives the colour or the flavour.
The sprouts must stay raw and cold. Their squeak against the heavy broth is half the point of the dish.
Like most long-simmered dishes it is better reheated the next day, once the spice paste has settled into the broth.