How to make Soto Ayam from the very begin (Indonesian chicken soup).

Soto Ayam is one of the most common and popular dishes in Indonesia. I made it from scratch and am sharing the recipe so you can make it as well. It’s a very tasty soup. If you are feeling a bit under the weather this is an excellent food to eat. This recipe doesn’t use any sachet, or instant broth. I am using a lot of ingredients, and luckily they are common. This recipe uses ingredients that should be available in almost any supermarkets.

To make Soto Ayam you would need about 40 minutes in total. It’s not long considering we are making it from scratch. It can also last for several days. Prepare some Tupperware to hold your soup.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 kg chicken
• 150 g vermicelli
• 100 gr tauge
• 1/2 cabbage
• 2 eggs (boiled)
• 6 garlic
• 6 shallots
• 4 cm turmeric
• 4 cm ginger
• 1,5 tbs salt
• 1 tsp pepper
• 2 pcs lemongrass
• 2 pcs leek
• 2 pcs bay leaves
• 4 pcs of lime leaves
• 2 branch of celery
• spring onions

Step 1: Blend or grind

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Either use a pestle and mortar or a blender. Blend (or grind) onion, turmeric, garlic and ginger with a little bit of water. This will be used later in de recipe for the soup. The result shown in the picture is what you are aiming for if you’re grinding.

Step 2: Leaves

Smash the lemongrass, and prepare leek, bay leaves, and lemon leaves. Cut the spring onions in small pieces. This will come at the last step.

Step 3: Soto Ayam in the making

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We start with frying only the chicken skin. This contains fat. When the fat is released add the rest of the chicken. Stir it until it becomes like the third picture. At this point add the blended mixture of turmeric garlic and ginger we made in Step 1. Also add the leaves that were prepared in step 2.

Add water, the results is a yellow colour soup. The turmeric gives this color. keep it on low fire and continue the following steps.

Step 4: Soto Ayam essentials

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For this, we prepare tauge, cabbage, vermicelli, tomatoes, boiled egg, onion leaf and a slice of lemon. In this soup, we used our very own homemade tauge. I am still going to share how to make this. I call all these ingredients essentials because it’s needed to acquire the taste and texture.

Step 5: Sambal Soto (optional)

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This step is if you like to make it a bit spicy hot. Add some chili, garlic and salt. Grind it, and add a little bit of the soup we made in step 3. It should be on low fire while the other ingredients are in the process.

Also check my other spicy chili garlic sambal recipe.

Step 6: Pepper

Add some pepper to the soup. By now a little bit of water has evaporated. If too much water got evaporated, just add some more.

Step 7: Time to attend to the chicken

Remove the chicken from the soup. If the skin is still attached, remove it. The chicken meat is already done, but we will fry it (with the lid on). This will additional texture and taste. After frying for a couple of minutes take it out.

Shred the chicken with 2 forks, careful it’s a bit hot.

Step 10: Serve and enjoy

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After shredding the chicken, you are ready to serve. Prepare a bowl with tauge, vermicelli, cabbage and chicken. On top of that add the tomatoes, onion leaves, half an egg. Now pour in the soup using (carefully) and add some extra chicken if there is space.

Voila Soto Ayam, ready to eat. It wasn’t that hard in 10 steps you just made delicious Indonesian chicken soup. You can garnish it with crispy fried onion on top. Add some lemon to increase the acidity and taste.

How to make Soto Ayam summary