Gado-gado (Indonesian Salad with Peanut Sauce)
Gado-gado is a vegetable salad with a peanut sauce dressing.
Ingredients
Peanut sauce
- 1 g terasi (fermented prawn paste)
- Vegetable oil
- 300 g peanuts
- Fresh or dried chile pepper
- 1 clove garlic
- Salt
- 125 g gula jawa (Indonesian palm sugar)
- 4 shallots
- Sugar
- Fresh lime juice or rice vinegar
Salad
- Hard-boiled eggs, sliced
- Whole potatoes, steamed or boiled
- Mixed vegetables (e.g. cabbage, bean sprouts, cucumber, chayote, water spinach, asparagus bean, spinach)
- Deep fried soybean cake
- Deep fried tempeh
- Deep fried kerupuk (fish or prawn crackers)
- Deep fried shallot
Steps
Peanut sauce
- Fry the prawn paste in vegetable oil until fragrant.
- Fry the peanuts until golden brown. Remove from the pan. Cool. Drain off all but a little of the excess oil.
- Grind the peanuts to a paste.
- Add ground chili pepper, garlic, salt, sugar and prawn paste to the peanut paste. Grind to mix.
- Put the paste in a pan. Add water to dissolve (coconut milk for a richer taste).
- Add more sugar to taste. Bring to the boil.
- Simmer until thick. Season with the lime juice or vinegar.
Salad
- Remove the skin from the boiled potatoes. Deep fry until golden brown. Slice.
- Wash and shred or chop cabbage, spinach and water spinach.
- Boil water in a pan. Cook the cabbage until tender. Drain.
- Reuse the strained boiling water to boil the spinach, then the water spinach. Drain each.
- Blanch the bean sprouts about 30 seconds. Drain.
- Peel, wash and slice the chayote. Boil until tender.
- Wash and slice the cucumber.
- Arrange the salad, sliced potatoes, fried tofu, fried tempeh and eggs on a large plate, randomly or in layers.
- Pour the peanut sauce over the salad.
- Top with deep fried shallots. Serve with kerupuk.
Notes from the original
- Prawn crackers are non-vegetarian. You can substitute them with kerupuk sayur or emping if you wish this dish to be completely vegetarian.
- Add some kecap manis (Malay/Indonesian sweet soy sauce) to taste.
- You may substitute the peanut sauce recipe for the procedure here.
- cashew nuts is secret ingredient to make peanut sauce tastes richer.
- Some cooks like to blanche or steam the cabbage, cauliflower, and carrots rather than serve them raw.
- Use chunky peanut butter as substitute for ground peanuts.
Source. Adapted from “Cookbook:Gado-gado (Indonesian Salad with Peanut Sauce)” by Wikibooks contributors, revision of 2025-10-18, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Changes. Steps rewritten into short commands. Introduction shortened. Wiki formatting removed. This adapted recipe is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.






