Food enthusiasts’ search for perfect meat dish often ends at Chicken Satay, which uses Satay sauce as an accompanying condiment. Curiously, the association with satay sauce gives these Southeast Asian grilled meat delicacies the name satay chicken. Originated in Java, Indonesia, Satay gradually spread its appeal over the entire East Asian and Southeast Asian peninsula, before becoming a hot meal of choice among the whole world of gastronomists. While applauding the refined and luscious taste of this dish, how many of you have really wondered about the brilliant blend between the satay and the accompanying sauce?  Curiously, this sauce is called by the gourmets simply Satay Sauce, without knowing, that this is in fact a variant of peanut sauce.

At this moment, some of you might already have started to plan a satay chicken dish at home, and experience the curious blend of it with the satay sauce. Asia Market has a collection of the most sought after Satay Sauce brands in our online store, which you can find here.   

The Satay sauce is prepared using ground roasted peanuts. A number of other ingredients are prevalent in the making of satay sauce, all having peanut as the base, and in some occasions, crunchy peanut butter replaces ground roasted peanuts. You may try at home a relatively simple recipe, which is appended at the end of this article.

Let’s talk about Satay first!

Satay sauce became famous through its association with chicken satay. So, there is no point in talking about the sauce without saying a few words about the chicken dish. The word satay or ‘sate’ is originated from the vocabulary of Indonesian and Malaysian languages. Satay is prepared by grilling seasoned and skewered meat pieces. Here is a good seasoning mix from our online store for the perfect chicken satay. For the best taste, season your chicken slices overnight in refrigerator and grill the next day. Here is another one for satay seasoning. In this second one, the exact taste of chicken satay has been replicated as you would find it in Indonesian street food stores.

Indonesian Satay is prepared using slices of chicken, beef, pork, goat, mutton, or other meats. There are fish and tofu variations as well. The seasoned meat slices (or dices) are skewered using bamboo spits, and are grilled or barbecued over fire. Once the grilling is over, they are served with peanut sauce. This could be the reason why the name Satay Sauce came to be used in association with peanut sauce.

More about Satay Sauce

Traditionally, Satay is eaten with a combination of soy sauce and satay sauce. So, most of the satay sauce variants in our online store have soy ingredients. But this particular one from Yeo’s doesn’t have soy contents, and it makes use of coconut extract. It is a nice idea to try this specialty as well along with your satay dishes.

Satay sauce is very widely used in Indonesian cuisine as well as in Malaysian dishes. It is an essential condiment used with a good number of Indonesian dishes, and is either served as a dipping sauce or added to the main ingredients of a recipe to get a more pleasing taste. We also have an Indonesian instant noodles variety with a taste of original satay called Mi Goreng Satay Noodles.

Or, just like the Chinese way, you can use satay sauce with dishes like hot pot, Dan dan noodles, and other grilled meat dishes. Curiously, in Singapore, apart from its use with satay, the peanut sauce is used in a dish called Satay bee hoon, which is a rice vermicelli dish. The peanut satay sauce is also found in Filippino cuisine, but only in a limited manner. In the cuisine of Thailand, a sweeter version of the peanut sauce is more popular.

Coming to the preparation of Satay Sauce, garlic, lemon juice, palm sugar, lemongrass, shallot, ginger, tamarind, salt, chilli, pepper, and sweet soy sauce are among a few of its ingredients, which are added to the peanuts base. They are all grounded together to get the right balance of taste and the peculiar texture and colour.

To conclude, let us have a look into an easy peanut Satay Sauce recipe below:

Satay Sauce: Recipe

Ingredients

• Peanut butter (crunchy) – 2/3 tbsp
• Onion – 1/2 piece, chopped
• Dark soy sauce – 1 tbsp
• Brown sugar – 2 tsp
• Chilli flakes – ½ tsp
• Coconut milk – 1 can

 How to make:

 Mix onion, brown sugar, and chilli flakes together and ground into a paste. Now combine all ingredients and transfer into a wok. Heat it up, while stirring frequently, and bring to the boil. Keep on stirring until it gets the sauce-like texture.

Share your satay experience with us!