Description
Ayam goreng lengkuas is a unique fried chicken dish from the Sunda region of West Java. Here, the chicken is simmered in spices that include a ton of galangal, deep fried, and then topped with galangal floss.
Ingredients
Scale
- 1 whole chicken, cut into pieces, wash thoroughly
- 200 gr fresh galangal, grate manually or grind in a food processor
- 8 shallots, peeled, chopped
- 4 cloves garlic, peeled, chopped
- 4 roasted candlenuts, chopped
- 1 tsp coriander seeds
- 3 cm turmeric, peeled, chopped
- 3 cm ginger, peeled, chopped
- 2 lemongrass, use only the white part, cut into 3, bruised
- 3 kaffir lime leaves
- 2 salam leaves
- Salt to taste
- 300 ml water
- Cooking oil for deep frying
Instructions
- Manually grate the galangal or grind it in a food processor
- Blend into a fine paste: shallots, garlic, candlenuts, coriander seed, turmeric and ginger. Set aside.
- In a deep wok, put the grated galangal, spice paste, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, salam leaves and salt. Mix all the spices and herbs thoroughly.
- Add the chicken.
- Pour the water, mix, and then cook everything over medium high heat until it boils. When it boils, reduce the heat to medium low.
- Cook the chicken for 45 minutes – 1 hour.
- When it’s done, remove the chicken and discard the herbs (lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves and salam leaves).
- Strain the leftover spice, and discard the gravy.
- Deep fry the chicken until golden brown (around 4 minutes each side), set aside.
- Deep fry the leftover spice until golden brown.
- Transfer the fried chicken onto a serving plate and sprinkle with the fried spices.
Notes
- Grating galangal (the way we grate coconut) is the best method to get beautiful floss, but a blender can be used as well (I used one too). Please make sure to chop the galangal into smaller pieces before blending it to avoid the galangal getting stuck in the blender, and make sure to not blend it into a too fine pulp. We want some texture here to get nice floss.
- Blend the fresh galangal separately from the other spices.
Keywords: Lemongrass, double cooking