Indonesian traditional food or snacks are still popular until today. The traditional food snacks that have existed from a long time ago, before you’re even born. These snacks aren’t available or cannot bought it in big restaurant such as McDonald or Hoka Hoka Bento.
But you can try to find out it and buy them in a small or loccal traditional market. Usually will be sold out at the day time, so you should go there in early morning. There are a plenty of traditional food/snacks that come from many regions or provinces around Indonesia.
But I usually goi to pick them, in the place based on my preference since I like bought and have good taste with it. I don’t really sure about it to write here, but I’ll put here on the list as they’re quite liked or popular in Indonesia.
1. Onde-Onde
tokomesin
Onde-onde has a round shape sprinkled with sesame and filled with delicious green beans inside so that if you take a bite, you’ll be surprised with something delicious and chewy from the inside.
Onde-onde is made of glutinous rice flour, and flour. For the filling ingredient, you can add green beans, water, and salt. Fry it until you get a nice brown skin of it. It’s best served while it’s still warm or in cold weather during the rainy season.
2. Serabi
primarasa
This legendary traditional food comes in various flavors as well. You can get plenty of colors depending on what kind of ingredients that you or the cook is making. This ufo-shaped snack is well-known in Indonesia.
Many regions have their own characteristic of serabi. Yes, it’s been improvised according to the local taste. Here in my hometown, it usually made of rice flour with santan or coconut milk. But I think serabi isn’t my kind of traditional snack.
The sellers here are usually open around 5 am or around down. People, especially women, love to begin their activity early in the morning. My village is famous for its jasmine flowers. Many women usually come to jasmine gardens and pick them from dawn to the daytime.
They need something to fill their stomachs, and serabi is one of the best choices those women choose for their breakfast before picking the flower.
3. Klepon
bacatereus
I love klepon, but not as much as I like onde-onde. It comes in balls shape just like onde-onde but it has green skin and topped with grated coconut. It’s made of glutinous rice flour with brown sugar inside.
Once you bite it, the brown sugar will soon melt in your mouth. It has a smooth texture with a sweet taste from brown sugar and savory at once. To make klepon is also a breeze and the ingredients required are also ubiquitous – they’re everyday ingredients after all.
4. Getuk
tokopedia
Cassava is a versatile root and they thrive in a country like Indonesia. They’re called singkong in Indonesian. People usually eat both their roots and leaves, and then they plant back their stems by cutting them first about 30 cm long and drive into the soil.
You need to peel their skin out and then steam them. After that, all you have to do is to mash them with an antan or a pestle but longer and bigger, until they become sticky. It’s usually served with grated coconut along with hot drinks such as tea or coffee.
5. Putu
ngalam
This snack is fairly unique in attracting its consumers. The consumers usually know when the seller comes as putu has a very unique sound in the cooking process. The sound is emitted when the seller lifts a piece of putu off the steamed pan.
Putu is cooked using a steam pan just like when you’re cooking water in cattle. When water is boiled, the cattle then will emit the sounds, which is similar to putu’s. It’s made of rough rice flour, palm sugar and greeted coconut.
Most of these traditional snacks are cheap because the targets come from low – medium consumer levels. Those consumers, me included, prefer local snacks rather than plastic-package ones or junk food.
6. Lupis
bukareview
This snack would always make me smile since its name reminds me of the gorgeous and multitalented singer who is famous for her dancing moves. She’s also an actress who starred plenty of famous Hollywood movies.
But her latest appearance as a cameo along with Stranger Things’s Millie Bobby Brown and DCEU’s Wonder Woman Gal Gadot in a video clip by a famous American pop-rock band will be a nice hint for you, I guess.
Lupis or Lopis has a glutinous texture as it’s made of glutinous rice wrapped with banana leaf or coconut leaf. As usual, lopis comes or is served with grated coconut. It’s typically consumed in the morning or afternoon with tea.
7. Tiwul
negerikuindonesia
Tiwul has decreased less and less for its popularity replaced by countless of unhealthy snacks that are being sold in school canteens and stores everywhere. The food in this picture is called tiwul, but in my area, it’s called growol.
To make tiwul, first, you need to peel out cassava skin and cut it off into small pieces just like when you cut cucumber for pickles served with fried rice. This is the way people here make tiwul.
But in that picture, it’s made of cassava flour that’s mixed with water, sugar, coconut milk and salt until it looks like goat’s dirt then boil it. LOL You can also give pandan leaves to make it have a pleasant smell.
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8. Wajik kletik
satujam
I wish I could eat wajik kletik like right now. Wajik kletik is so tasty, and it makes my mouth watering already as I’m typing. This guy is created from glutinous rice and packed with a beautiful package wrapped by corn husk or klobot.
9. Lemper
agrowindo
This guy with a green package form banana leaf is made of glutinous rice filled with abon or minced chicken meat, and it’s tasty for sure.
In my town, lemper is made of cassava and grated coconut that’s mixed before getting boiled or steamed.
It has a longer shaped than lemper on the picture, and instead it’s filled with brown sugar inside it. It’s such a traditional snack that’s perfect to accompany your busy afternoons. It’s one of my favorite cassava-creation food.
10. Clorot
smilesgram
I think I ever ate this conned –shaped snack. But I don’t remember its name. My mom said that this snack is called slompret – it does look like a trumpet (horn) after all. You can make a small hole at the end of the cone and blow it up. It’ll a nice sound like a trumpet’s.
Clorot comes from Purworejo Regency, Central Java. It may be an arduous task to make clorot as you have to focus to put or fill the coconut leaves cone and make sure to keep the shape not to fall apart.
11. Lumpia
resephariini
I used to eat lumpia as a kid like a lot. I found it tasty and I would eat with raw chili until my face turned red. It’s filled with several ingredients that make it delicious such as bamboo shoot, egg, meat, and seafood.
12. Cucur
dbs
Cucur has a thin and round shape with a dark brown look. It’s greasy as it’s a fried snack. I think I don’t really like foo that’s fried. I prefer boiled or steamed food to fried food. The ingredients consist of rice flour, wheat flour, brown sugar, pandan leaves, water, and salt.
13. Dadar Gulung
id.tastemade
As a kid, I remember buying dadar gulung after school. I found it delicious when I was little and I bought it quite often because it was cheap, and I loved its texture that smooth with colorful appearance such as red and green.
Dadar basically has the same meaning as omelet. Telur dadar or omelet is the same thing. As the name suggests, dadar gulung is made by wrapping the layer or gulung. Before being wrapped, the layer will be filled with “unti” or grated coconut with brown sugar.
14. Nagasari
indonesiacakeshop
I now start to look at this guy with a different point of view as I found a meme about this food. The called this legendary snack in English with Dragon Essence. LOL well, they were right though because Naga means dragon and sari can be translated as essence in English.
Dragon essence, what a name!
Anyway, it’s made of rice flour, sago four, coconut milk and sugar. It’s perfected with a slice of banana that you’ll find inside it. In my area, nagasari is called bongko.
Bongko is typically made when a man is having an engagement party. The guy’s family will make bongko in a huge number along with ketan and poci-poci. Then they will give it to the girl’s family to celebrate it.
The family then give or share it with their neighbors as a sign or to announce that their daughter is engaged to someone by giving bongko, ketan and poci-poci.
What a unique tradition! LOL
15. Tape
adira
Last but not least, it’s tape. Again it comes from cassava. Tape or peuyeum is a traditional snack that is peculiar to Bandung, West Java. In my hometown, it’s called kenyos. LOL Tape is a fermented food that has a long process in the making.
Tape or peuyeum can be found in Bandung. There are peuyuem sellers everywhere on every corner of Bandung. There you can also find tahu sumedang (Sumedang tofu) that’s typically found next to bar stand side by side.
Indonesian traditional snacks are a little bit hard to find these days except you go to some certain places that still make them. It’s not because they’re expensive or difficult to make, but it’s because kids are prefer ice cream, chocolate and such to those legendary snacks.
I’m craving for some of these snacks as I’m writing this article. The problem is where I can get them? None of street vendors who go back and forth near my house are selling traditional snacks, some of which I can barely remember how they taste.
I hope this article can inspire you to make one of those Indonesian traditional snacks that you enjoy with the family.
