This is a super easy and yummy condiment that you’d find at many Indonesian dinner tables. It’s sweet, spicy and tangy and great for dipping stuff in. This sauce goes well with most Indonesian snacks, like fried tofu or fried tempeh, but it’s probably most well known for being a wonderful sauce for lamb sate. The sauce itself is vegan, and probably one of my personal favourites!

I remember once when I was about seven years old, my mom taught me to make a super easy “fried rice” with just sambel kecap, a bowl of leftover rice, an egg, a tomato and some sliced scallions. We reheated the rice, added a tiny bit of sesame oil, stirred the sambel kecap in and placed the sambel kecap rice into a bowl. She let me fry the egg, sunny-side up, with the egg yolk still runny, and placed that on top of the “fried rice” before sprinkling the scallions and diced tomatoes over everything. Seven-year-old me was so proud.

So here is my directions for sambel kecap.

What you need

1 cup sweet soy sauce (Indonesian kecap manis, also spelled ketjap manis on some packaging). ⅓ cup salty soy sauce. The juice of half a lime. Finely diced: ¼ cup shallots, 1 clove garlic, 6-8 red bird’s eye chilli.

Putting everything together

Mix the sweet and salty soy sauces with the lime juice, stirring with a spoon. Then add all the finely diced chillies, shallots and garlic. Can use immediately or leave this for a few hours before drizzling away on anything you fancy. I even dip my prawn crackers, or kerupuk, in it.

Enjoy! I ended up having mine with fried tofu and steamed Jasmine rice.