Gudeg

General Information

Gudeg is a traditional Javanese cuisine from Yogyakarta and Central Java, Indonesia.It is traditionally associated with Yogyakarta, and Yogyakarta is sometimes nicknamed “Kota Gudeg” (city of gudeg). So, it is obvious that there are a center of Yogyakarta gudeg restaurants where it exist in the Wijilan area to the east side of the Yogyakarta Kraton (Sultan’s palace).

While gudeg itself is a type of a vegetarian food according to its ingredients, since it only consists of unripe jackfruit and coconut milk. Moreover, according in the information in Wikipedia, gudeg can be packed into a besek (box made from bamboo) or kendil (clay jar), or canned. Canned gudeg can last up to one year.The serving for gudeg is not in a single dish. However, gudeg is commonly served with egg or chicken. Gudeg is served with white steamed rice, chicken either as opor ayam (chicken in coconut milk) or ayam goreng (fried chicken), telur pindang, opor telur or just plain hard-boiled egg, tofu and or tempeh, and sambel goreng krechek a stew made of crisp beef skins. The following is the appearance of a full serving of Gudeg :

Ingredients

Still according to Wikipedia, Gudeg main ingredients are young unripe jack fruit. In Javanese word, the name for it is gori. While in Indonesian word, the name is nangka muda. So, this young unripe jack is stewed for several hours with palm sugar, and coconut milk. Also, there are additional spices including garlic, shallot, candlenut, coriander seed, galangal, bay leaves, and teak leaves, the latter giving a reddish-brown color to the dish. So, gudeg itself has a suitable description as “green jack fruit sweet stew”.

Varians

There are several types of gudeg; dry, wet according to the composition of it. Furthermore, according to the origin of it, there are a Yogyakarta style, Solo style and East Javanese style. Dry gudeg has only a bit of coconut milk and thus has little sauce. Wet gudeg includes more coconut milk. The most common gudeg comes from Yogyakarta, and is usually sweeter, drier and reddish in color. It is because of the addition of teak leaves as coloring agent.

Solo gudeg from the city of Surakarta is more watery and soupy, with much coconut milk, and is whitish in color. It is generally because there is no addition of the teak leaves in it. Yogyakarta’s gudeg is usually has the name of “red gudeg”, while the Solo’s gudeg has a name of “white gudeg”. The East Javanese style of gudeg has a spicier and hotter taste compared to the Yogyakarta style gudeg, which is sweeter.

Where to find

Warung and restaurants serving gudeg exist and available throughout Indonesian cities, such as Greater Jakarta. It is a popular dish in Javanese restaurants, and it also exist in neighboring countries, such as Singapore. There are several popular place in Yogyakarta for its Gudeg. The first one is ‘Gudeg Yu Dum Wijilan 167’ in this following location :

The next one is a place with the name of ‘Gudeg Pawon’ in the following location :

Last but not least, a restaurant with the name of ‘Gudeg Bu Tjitro 1925’ in the following location :