Gudeg

                   Indonesia have so many traditional dish that have unique form and complexity, most of them are so popular around us. One of the most popular one is Gudeg. Gudeg or we can say it in English as green jackfruit stew is a very sweet traditional dish made of young jackfruit, cooked with palm sugar and seasoning until it turns dark. Gudeg is a traditional dish from Yogyakarta, but any source also tell that Gudeg is from Central Java. Nowadays Gudeg become very popoular in Indonesia, we can find it almost in every place in Indonesia, not only in Yogyakarta. There are many special and unique things that we can find in a Gudeg dish. Other Special is that Gudeg have many variation of dish.

The first one is Wet Gudeg or in the origrinal name we say it ‘Guded Basah’. Wet Gudeg use more coconut milk or use semi-fluid coconut milk, so they wet. Because of that, wet Gudeg just has short time expired. The colour of Wet Gudeg is brighter than the other variation of Gudeg. Other type of Gudeg is ‘Gudeg Kering’ or in english we can say it as Dry Gudeg. Dry Gudeg is the most popular Gudeg nowadays . Dry Gudeg use thick coconut milk, so that they dry, and we can save it for a longer time and we can also bring it for far travelling. The third variation of gudeg is ‘Manggar Gudeg’ . Manggar Gudeg is rather difficult to found. Manggar Gudeg use different main ingridient because they use the flower of Jackfruit tree (Manggar) as the main ingridient. Gudeg is a complex dish if we look it from the way to cook this dish. Cooking Gudeg needs long time. Before cooking, we must have many ingridients like young jack fruit, coconut milk, palm sugar, teak leaves, and seasoning. Palm sugar and teak leaves will make gudeg ‘s color is brown. To cook it, we must boil it as long as 24 hours or more for steam the sauce. There are also a unique thing in the way people serve Gudeg. The first one is The Side Dish of Gudeg. To enjoy Gudeg there is a sauce, named Areh, which made from coconut milk. Then there is a special side dish named ‘Sambal goreng Krecek’ or in English we can say it a stew made of crisp beef skins. From the name we know that it is made from crisp beef skins. People usually eat Gudeg with chicken, egg, tempe and tahu. But, it is not in the usually case. They are cooked in hard boiled, the color is very dark brown. The process as same as Gudeg cooking process. Not only Side Dish, Gudeg also have unique at the container. The first is Gudeg Jugs. Gudeg jugs is a container of Gudeg like a big bowl made from clay. This kind of container is usually to bring a lot portion of Gudeg, but in many seller we must buy it, not free. The free and simple one is Besek. Besek is a container of Gudeg, it is a box basket made from rattan. Besides of that, nowadays, there is another kind container of Gudeg in the modern form. There is Gudeg in can. Ya, with this kind of Gudeg you can buy Gudeg just from the internet. In Summary, Gudeg is a unique, special, and complex traditional dish from Yogyakarta, which now become very popular in Indonesia. Now, we as an Indonesian must save gudeg and develope it more with our creativity.

Text by:

Angesti Aruming Utami / 130773/S1B