Indonesian spices are the fresh roots, seeds and nuts that Indonesian cooks grind into a wet paste called bumbu, plus a few herbs added whole. Nutmeg and cloves belong on the list too, because they first grew in the Maluku islands. With shallots, garlic and chili, ten of these cover most Indonesian home cooking.
Each one is below with its Indonesian name and the swap that works. Buying them is the easy part. What makes a dish taste Indonesian is frying the paste in oil until the raw smell is gone, which takes 4 to 7 minutes.
Bumbu and Rempah: Two Words for Two Jobs
Rempah is the Indonesian word for spices, and it usually means the dried ones, such as nutmeg, cloves, pepper and coriander seed. Bumbu is the wider word. It covers any seasoning, even salt and sugar. In a recipe, it most often means the fresh paste a dish starts from.
That paste is ground wet, from shallot, garlic and fresh roots. It is also the clearest difference from North Indian cooking, which leans on dried, ground spice blends. Indonesian cooking sits closer to Thai, where the aromatics go in fresh and the dried spices play a supporting part.
So when an Indonesian recipe says bumbu, read it as the paste, not the spice jar. Indonesian cooks grind it in a stone mortar, and a small blender does the same job at home.
The 3 Base Pastes Behind Most Indonesian Dishes
Most Indonesian home cooking starts from one of three base pastes, named by color: white, yellow and red. All three begin with shallot and garlic. What goes in next sets the color, and the color tells you which dishes the paste belongs to. Indonesia's detikFood lists the same three, though every family adjusts the details.
| Base paste | Indonesian name | Starts with | Then adds | Cooked into |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| White | bumbu dasar putih | Shallot, garlic, candlenut | Coriander seed, often galangal | Opor ayam, sayur lodeh, semur |
| Yellow | bumbu dasar kuning | Shallot, garlic, candlenut | Turmeric, ginger, galangal | Soto, nasi kuning, acar kuning |
| Red | bumbu dasar merah | Shallot, garlic, red chili | Tomato, sometimes shrimp paste | Balado, sambal goreng, nasi goreng |
Learn the white paste first. The yellow paste is the white one with turmeric, ginger and galangal added, and the red one leads with fresh chili instead. Bali has a larger paste of its own, base genep, built from many of the same roots.
Three Roots Do the Heavy Lifting
Turmeric, galangal and kencur are rhizomes, the knobbly underground stems of plants in the ginger family. They look alike in the shop and taste nothing alike in the pot. Buy them fresh when you can, because dried galangal and ground turmeric both taste flatter than the fresh roots.
Turmeric (Kunyit): Fry It or It Tastes Chalky
Turmeric gives a dish its gold color and a warm, earthy base. Fresh turmeric is bright orange inside and stains boards and fingers, so rinse the board as soon as you finish. A 2.5 cm (1 inch) piece of fresh root equals about 1 teaspoon of ground turmeric.
Turmeric also shows most clearly why the paste gets fried. Stirred into liquid raw, it tastes chalky no matter how long it simmers. That is why the paste for a clear, golden soto ayam broth goes into the pan before any liquid does. It fries until a thin rim of oil separates at the edge.
Galangal (Lengkuas): Not a Stronger Ginger
Galangal is paler and much harder than ginger. It tastes sharp, piney and citrusy, where ginger tastes warm and faintly sweet. It is too woody to grate, so slice it thin across the grain before it goes into the blender.
Ginger is the usual swap, and it gets you halfway. I use three quarters of the galangal weight in ginger, plus a little lime zest. The zest brings back the citrus, but nothing brings back the pine.
Kencur: The Root With No Substitute
Kencur is a small, round, brown rhizome sold in English as aromatic ginger or sand ginger. Its botanical name, Kaempferia galanga, is why people mix it up with galangal (Alpinia galanga), but it is a different plant. It smells of camphor and pepper. Kencur flavors the peanut dressings for pecel and karedok, and beras kencur, a rice and kencur drink from the jamu tradition.
Use kencur sparingly, because its camphor note takes over fast. Nothing else tastes like it. If you cannot find it, leave it out and accept a milder dressing.
Leaves and Stalks Go Into the Pot Whole
Lemongrass, salam leaves and makrut lime leaves are bruised or torn and added whole, not ground into the paste. They go in once the paste has fried. They flavor the oil and the liquid, then come out before serving or stay at the side of the plate.
Lemongrass (Serai): Bruise It, Then Knot It
Use the pale bottom third of the stalk, where the aroma sits. Smash it with the back of a knife until it splits, then tie it in a knot so it holds together in the pot. Frozen lemongrass works almost as well as fresh, which makes it the easiest of the ten to keep at home.
Salam Leaf (Daun Salam): Not a Bay Leaf
Salam is sold as Indonesian bay leaf, but it comes from Syzygium polyanthum, a member of the myrtle family alongside clove and guava. European bay is a laurel with a sharper, eucalyptus-like smell. The two are not interchangeable, and bay laurel pulls a coconut braise toward a French stew.
Dried salam leaves are sold in Indonesian grocers and online. They smell of almost nothing until they spend a few minutes in hot oil or liquid. When I have none, I leave them out. A pale coconut dish such as opor ayam, the white chicken curry served at Eid, still tastes right without salam, and wrong with bay laurel.
Makrut Lime Leaf (Daun Jeruk Purut): Tear It First
Makrut lime leaves are glossy, double-lobed leaves from the Citrus hystrix tree, and older labels still call them kaffir lime leaves. Tear or twist each leaf before it goes in, so the oil in the leaf reaches the pot. For a paste or a garnish, pull out the tough center vein and slice the leaf into fine threads. Frozen leaves are the best stand-in for fresh, and dried ones are much weaker.
Candlenut and Coriander Seed Hold the Paste Together
Candlenut and coriander seed are the dry backbone of the white and yellow pastes. Candlenut gives body and a mild richness. Coriander seed adds a warm citrus layer under everything else.
Candlenut (Kemiri): Cook It Before You Eat It
Candlenuts are waxy, cream-colored nuts about the size of a macadamia. Ground into a paste, they thicken it the way ground almonds thicken a sauce. Raw candlenuts are mildly toxic, so never eat one straight from the bag.
Toast them in a dry pan over medium heat for 1 to 2 minutes, until they smell nutty and pick up a few gold spots. Then grind them with the paste, and the frying finishes the job. Macadamia nuts are the standard swap, 1 for 1, and need no toasting. Macadamia is a tree nut, so skip both for anyone with a nut allergy.
Coriander Seed (Ketumbar): The Seed, Not the Leaf
When an Indonesian recipe says ketumbar, it almost always means the seed. Toast whole seeds in a dry pan for 1 to 2 minutes, until they darken a shade and smell of orange peel, then grind them. Whole seeds hold their aroma far longer than ground coriander, so buy them whole.
Nutmeg and Cloves, the Original Indonesian Spices
Nutmeg, mace and cloves are the Indonesian spices that made the country famous long before its food was. For centuries they grew almost nowhere but a handful of islands in Maluku, the Spice Islands. Cloves came from the north, around Ternate and Tidore, and nutmeg and mace came from the Banda Islands. Britannica records an Asian trade in both that ran well before any European ship arrived.
In the everyday kitchen they play a smaller part than the fresh roots. Nutmeg and cloves define semur, the sweet soy braise whose name comes from the Dutch word smoor, and they scent sop buntut, Indonesian oxtail soup. Grate nutmeg fresh from the whole seed, because the ground version fades fast. In my opor ayam, ¼ teaspoon of nutmeg is enough to scent a pot for 4.
What Can You Use Instead of Galangal, Candlenut or Salam?
Most Indonesian spices have a swap that works, and two have none. The table gives the best swap for each, how much to use, and what you lose.
| Spice | Best swap | How much | What changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Galangal | Fresh ginger plus a little lime zest | ¾ the weight of galangal | The citrus comes back, the pine does not |
| Fresh turmeric | Ground turmeric | 1 tsp per 2.5 cm (1 inch) piece | Slightly duller color and flavor |
| Candlenut | Macadamia nut | 1 for 1 | Very close, and no toasting needed |
| Lemongrass | Frozen lemongrass | 1 for 1 | Almost nothing |
| Makrut lime leaf | Frozen leaves | 1 for 1 | Almost nothing, while dried leaves are far weaker |
| Salam leaf | Leave it out | None | A milder dish that still tastes right |
| Kencur | Leave it out | None | The camphor note is gone |
Dried galangal powder, sold as laos, is a weaker swap than it looks. It keeps the pepper and loses most of the citrus, so fresh ginger with lime zest comes closer. For a nut allergy, leave the candlenut out. The paste turns out thinner and less rich, but it still works.
Fry the Paste 4 to 7 Minutes, Until the Raw Smell Goes
A fresh Indonesian spice paste has to be fried, not warmed. For a paste that serves 4, fry it in about 2 tablespoons (30 ml) of oil over medium heat for 4 to 7 minutes, stirring. A small batch for 2, such as the paste for fried rice, needs 2 to 3 minutes.
The paste is done when the sharp, green smell that Indonesian cooks call langu turns sweet. By then the color has deepened a shade and oil starts to pool at the edges.
The reason is where the aroma lives. Much of the aroma in shallot, garlic, turmeric and galangal dissolves far more readily in fat than in water. In a restaurant kitchen, no paste meets liquid until it has been fried, and the rule holds at home. A raw paste simmered for an hour still tastes raw.
Three things go wrong at this stage:
- Heat too high. The shallots scorch before the roots cook through, and scorched shallot tastes bitter. If the edges brown within 2 minutes, turn the heat down.
- Too little oil. The paste sticks and steams instead of frying. Add a spoonful more oil if it clings to the pan.
- Liquid too early. Coconut milk or stock added before the oil separates leaves the raw smell in the finished dish. Wait for the rim of oil.
Terasi, the fermented shrimp paste, needs its own step. Toast it dry in the pan for 1 to 2 minutes, turning once, until it darkens a shade and crumbles. Then pound it into the paste before frying. For about a minute it smells strongly of the sea, so open a window. Toasted terasi is what separates village-style nasi goreng kampung from ordinary fried rice. Terasi is shellfish, so skip it for a shellfish allergy.
How Long Indonesian Spices Keep, Fresh or Fried
Fresh galangal and turmeric keep about 2 weeks in the fridge, wrapped in paper towel inside a loose bag. For longer, slice them into coins, freeze them flat on a tray, then bag them. They keep well for 3 to 6 months and go straight from the freezer into the blender. Lemongrass and makrut lime leaves freeze the same way.
Whole nutmeg, cloves and coriander seed stay fragrant much longer than their ground versions. Keep them in a sealed jar away from the heat of the stove.
Fried paste needs more care than Indonesian kitchen habit suggests. Many cooks keep a jar of fried base paste in the fridge for weeks. US food safety guidance is stricter, because garlic held in oil is a botulism risk. The National Center for Home Food Preservation says garlic in oil should be kept at 4°C (40°F) or below for no more than 4 days. For anything longer, freeze it.
So I freeze fried paste in an ice cube tray, 1 tablespoon per cube, then bag the cubes. They hold their aroma for up to 3 months, and a cube goes straight into a hot pan.
Start With Soto Ayam: 7 of the 10 in One Pot
Soto is one of five dishes that Indonesia's tourism ministry named national dishes in 2018. Soto ayam, the chicken version, is the best dish to learn this set on. Its yellow paste and broth use 7 of the 10 spices above. Only kencur, nutmeg and cloves sit it out.
After soto, pick the next dish by the paste it starts from. The Indonesian recipes at Lumina Recipes cover all three base pastes, and most of them run on the same shelf of roots, leaves and seeds.
Questions About Indonesian Spices
What spices is Indonesia famous for?
Indonesia is famous for nutmeg, mace and cloves, which for centuries grew almost nowhere except the Maluku islands, once called the Spice Islands. Those three drew Portuguese, Spanish, English and Dutch ships to the region. In everyday Indonesian cooking, though, the fresh roots matter more: turmeric, galangal and kencur, ground with candlenut and coriander seed into a paste.
Is Indonesian food always spicy?
Indonesian food is not always spicy, and chili is a newer arrival than most people think. Chili peppers come from the Americas and reached the region with Portuguese and Spanish traders in the 16th century. Dishes such as opor ayam and soto ayam carry no chili in the pot at all. The heat comes from sambal on the table, so each person adds their own.
Can you eat candlenuts raw?
Candlenuts should not be eaten raw. Raw kernels contain saponins and phorbol esters, which make them mildly toxic and can upset the stomach. Cooking breaks those compounds down. Toast candlenuts in a dry pan for 1 to 2 minutes, then fry them in the spice paste. Macadamia nuts are the usual swap and are safe to eat raw.
Where can I buy Indonesian spices outside Indonesia?
Indonesian spices are easiest to find at Asian grocers that stock Indonesian, Malaysian or Thai food. Check the freezer for galangal, turmeric, lemongrass and makrut lime leaves, and the dry shelves for candlenuts, coriander seed and dried salam leaves labeled daun salam. Indonesian online grocers ship the harder ones, such as kencur and terasi.
What is the difference between bumbu and sambal?
Bumbu and sambal do different jobs in Indonesian cooking. Bumbu is the spice paste cooked into a dish from the start, usually shallot, garlic and fresh roots fried in oil. Sambal is a chili condiment served beside the finished food, raw or cooked, so each person controls the heat. A single meal often uses both.