SOTO

Soto, sroto, tauto or coto is a common dish to be found in various regional variations of Indonesian cuisine. It is a traditional soup mainly composed of broth, meat and vegetables. There is no clear definition what makes a soto, but normally all traditional soups are called soto, while western/foreign influenced soups are called sop. It might be considered Indonesia's national dish, served as it is from Sumatra to Papua and in enough variations to fill an entire cookbook. Soto is omnipresent in Indonesia, available in many an open-air eatery and on seemingly every other street corner.^[1]

Varieties

One way to classify sotos is by their regional style. Many metropolitan areas have their own regional soto versions:

• Betawi soto, made of beef or beef offal, cooked in a whitish cow milk or coconut milk broth, with fried potato and tomato.
• Bandung soto, a clear beef soto with daikon pieces.
• Medan soto, a chicken/pork/beef/innards soto with added coconut milk and served with potato croqutte (perkedel). The meat pieces are fried before being served or mixed.
• Padang soto, a beef broth soto with slices of fried beef, bihun (rice vermicelli), and perkedel kentang (fried mashed potato).
• Banjar soto, spiced with lemongrass and sour hot sambal, accompanied with potato cakes.
• Makassar soto or coto Makassar, a beef and offal soto boiled in water used to wash rice, with fried peanut.
• Madura soto or soto Sulung/soto Ambengan, made with either chicken, beef or offal, in a yellowish transparent broth.
• Semarang soto, a chicken soto spiced with candlenut and often eaten with sate kerang (cockles on a stick)
• Kudus soto, made with water buffalo meat due to local taboos of the consumption of beef.
• Lamongan soto, a popular street food in various Indonesian metropolitan areas, a variation of the Madura soto.
• Pekalongan soto or tauto Pekalongan, spiced with tauco (a fermented miso-like bean paste).
• Banyumas soto or sroto Banyumas or sroto Sokaraja, made special by its peanut sambal, usually eaten with ketupat.
• Kediri soto, a chicken soto in coconut milk.
• Ambon soto, It is made of chicken and broth, flavored and colored with turmeric, ginger, galangal, garlic, (the three g's), lemongrass and loads of spices. Served with rice, the add-ins and toppings were blanched bean sprouts, shredded chicken, glass noodles, chopped celery leaves, golden fried shallots, fried potato sticks, kecap manis, hot sauce, and tiny potato croquettes. A healthy squeeze of lemon china , a really fragrant citrus, really brightens up the soup.

Some sotos are named based on their ingredients

• Soto ayam is a yellow spicy chicken soup with nasi empit (compressed rice that is then cut into small cakes) or ketupat or vermicelli, commonly found in Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia.
• Soto babat (lit. "tripe soto") is a cow's or goat's tripe, served in yellow spicy coconut milk soup with vermicelli, potato, and vegetables, commonly eaten with rice. It is commonly found throughout Indonesia.
• Soto kaki (lit. "foot soto") is a beef tendon and cartilage taken from cow's feet, served in yellow spicy coconut milk soup with vermicelli, potato, vegetables, ad krupuk, commonly eaten with rice. It is Betawi food and can found in Jakarta, Indonesia.
• Soto mi is a yellow spicy beef or chicken broth soup with noodle, commonly found in Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia. In Indonesia, Bogor is famous for its Soto mi, it is made with beef broth, kikil (cow's cartilage), noodle, and sliced risoles spring rolls.

Common Condiments

The following accompaniments are often eaten alongside soto.

• Stewed quail eggs or chicken eggs
• Cockles on a stick (sate kerang)
• Fried chicken giblets
• Prawn crackers, sometimes crushed and mixed with crushed fried garlic as koya in Madura soto
• Gnetum seed crackers (emping)
• Fried tofu or tempeh
• Potato cakes (perkedel)

Condiments common to soto dishes include hot chili sauce (sambal), sweet soy sauce, fried shallot and lime.

Ingredients

The meats that are most commonly used are chicken and beef, but there are also variations with offal, mutton, water buffalo meat and pork. The soup is usually accompanied by rice or compressed rice cakes (ketupat or buras). Offal is a very common ingredient in soto, and is considered as a delicacy: the rumen (blanket/flat/smooth tripe), reticulum (honeycomb and pocket tripe), omasum (book/bible/leaf tripe) and the intestines are all eaten.
Other ingredients of soto include soon alternatively spelled as sohun (rice vermicelli), mung bean sprouts and scallion.
Soto spices include the following: shallot, garlic, turmeric root, galangal, ginger, coriander, salt and pepper.
Soto can have a clear broth, a yellow transparent broth (coloured with turmeric) or a milky coconut-milk broth.
Soto in Malaysia and Singapore is the clear chicken broth type. Like many dishes, it may have been brought into the country by the many Javanese migrants in the early part of the 20th century.