Pepes Ikan (Indonesian Steamed Fish)

Pepes is cooking method of steaming the ingredients (fish, chicken, tofu, or mushroom) wrapped in banana leaves until it becomes tender, then grilling the packets. In this recipe any fresh water fish or salt water fish can be used as substitute. In restaurants serving West Java cuisine, where Ikan Pepes is always on the menu, the use of carp fish is very common.
Ingredients
Spice paste
- 2 cloves garlic
- 4 shallot
- 2 cm fresh ginger
- 2 cm fresh turmeric
- 50 g fresh chile pepper
- 5 candlenut
- 5 g tamarind
- ½ tsp salt
- 25 ml water
Assembly
- 1 kg whole fish (carp or snapper)
- 1 chopped tomato
- 1 stalk green onion
- 1 stalk lemongrass
- 5 salam leaves
- 50 g kemangi leaves (sweet basil; optional)
- Salt
- 1 tsp sugar
- 2 tbsp salad oil
- Banana leaves or aluminum foil to wrap
Steps
- Grind all spice paste ingredients together.
- Scale and clean fish. Remove intestines, not the eggs.
- Make three diagonal slashes on each side of the fish.
- Marinate fish with salt and tamarind, 15 minutes. Wash with a bowl of water to remove excess salt.
- Add cooking oil to spice paste. Mix.
- Coat fish with spice paste.
- Add kemangi leaves, salam leaves and sliced lemon grass.
- Wrap fish in banana leaves or aluminum foil.
- Steam over medium heat, 30 minutes. A pressure cooker is faster.
- Cool. Grill wrapped fish over charcoal fire.
Source. Adapted from “Cookbook:Pepes Ikan (Indonesian Steamed Fish)” by Wikibooks contributors, revision of 2025-06-29, 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.
Photo. IkanPepes.JPG by Sakurai Midori, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia. Resized; otherwise unchanged.






