Name: Soto Padang (Clear Beef Soup with Crisp-Fried Beef)
Prep time: 40 min
Cook time: 2 h
Total time: 2 h 40 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Indonesian
Ingredients: 600 g beef brisket; 2.5 L water; 2 stalks lemongrass; 4 lime leaves; 2 salam leaves (Indonesian bay); 1 piece cinnamon; 3 cloves; 2 tsp salt; 6 shallots; 4 cloves garlic; 2 cm ginger; 3 cm galangal; 2 tbsp vegetable oil; 500 ml vegetable oil (for frying); 3 potatoes; 1 egg; 3 tbsp fried shallots (bawang goreng); 150 g rice vermicelli; 4 boiled eggs; 1 handful celery leaves; 3 spring onions; 1 lime; 1 to taste sambal; 8 red crackers (kerupuk merah)

Ingredients

4servings

Broth and beef
beef brisket · in one piece600 g
water2.5 L
lemongrass · bruised and knotted2 stalks
lime leaves4
salam leaves (Indonesian bay) · leave out if unavailable2
cinnamon1 piece
cloves3
salt2 tsp
Bumbu (spice paste)
shallots6
garlic4 cloves
ginger2 cm
galangal3 cm
vegetable oil2 tbsp
For frying
vegetable oil (for frying)500 ml
potatoes · floury3
egg · to coat the potato patties1
fried shallots (bawang goreng) · 1 tbsp for the potato, the rest to finish3 tbsp
For the bowls
rice vermicelli150 g
boiled eggs · halved4
celery leaves · finely chopped1 handful
spring onions · sliced3
lime1
sambal1 to taste
As in the photograph (optional)
red crackers (kerupuk merah)8

Steps

Put the beef in cold water, bring it up and skim. Add the lemongrass, lime leaves, salam leaves, cinnamon, cloves and salt and simmer gently for 1 hour 30 minutes, until a chopstick goes into the meat easily.
⏲ 90 min
Grind the bumbu ingredients fine and fry the paste in 2 tbsp oil for 8 minutes, until the raw smell has gone and the oil seeps back out. Add it to the broth and simmer 20 minutes more. Keep the broth clear — do not thicken it here.
⏲ 28 min
Lift out the beef, let it cool a little, and slice it across the grain 3-4mm thick. Pat every slice dry with kitchen paper.
Boil the potatoes in their skins for 20 minutes, peel and mash them. Mix in 1 tbsp fried shallots, salt and pepper and shape into flat patties about 5cm across.
⏲ 20 min
Heat the frying oil to 170°C and fry the beef in batches for 6-8 minutes, until the edges are deep brown and it is crisp. Drain.
⏲ 7 min
Dip the potato patties in beaten egg and fry them in the same oil for 3 minutes, until golden.
⏲ 3 min
Soak the rice vermicelli in hot water for 5 minutes and drain.
⏲ 5 min
Into each bowl put vermicelli, fried beef, potato patties and a halved egg. Bring the broth back to a rolling boil, pour it over, and top with celery leaves, spring onion and fried shallots, with the crackers if using. Serve at once with lime and sambal.
⏲ 1 min

Variations

The version in the photograph: a bowl from a stall at Pasar Raya Padang, finished with red crackers (kerupuk merah). They are the optional line in the ingredients.
For breakfast: in Padang it is commonly eaten in the morning. Make the broth and fry the beef the day before, and in the morning there is only heating and assembling left.

More detail and the reasons why (2)

Boiled beef, not fried: Korean Wikipedia says the meat is sometimes boiled and sliced into the bowl and sometimes fried until crisp. Boiled, the beef and the broth taste of one thing; fried, they part company, for the reason in the tips.
Other sotos: soto is a family of Indonesian soups with a version in nearly every city. This one is the clear kind with no coconut milk, which is what separates it from the sotos whose broth is clouded with coconut.

Tips

The potato goes the same way. Boiled, mashed, shaped and fried. A coat of egg keeps the patties from coming apart in the oil.
Dry the slices before they fry. Boiled beef comes out wet, and a wet surface has to lose its water in the oil before it can start to brown.

More detail and the reasons why (5)

The pot stays clear and the rest happens in the bowl. Another Indonesian soup, soto Lamongan, sets out the arrangement: "The pot stays clear; each person thickens their own bowl." What its bowls receive is koya, which is body. What soto Padang's bowls receive is browning.
Meat in the pot cannot brown. That is the condition in browning: "While there is water on the surface, the temperature stalls at 100°C and essentially no browning happens." The beef that made the broth spent an hour and a half under water and is grey, so it comes out and is fried outside the pot.
The order is griot's. That page puts it as "The simmer makes it tender; the fry only builds the outside". But griot fries a chunk and builds only the outside; here the beef is sliced 3-4mm thin and fried until it is crisp right through, which the thinness makes possible.
Fried first, wet afterwards — and in the bowl. The same guide: "If anything wet is going on top, the browning has to happen first." The wet thing here is the broth, and it is poured on last, in the bowl rather than in the pot, which is why the beef never goes back into the pot to simmer. The Korean Wikipedia order is the same: noodles, meat and potato into each bowl, the egg, then the broth.
Soto Lamongan's variation is the rule here. That page lists, as a variation, that "some lift the boiled chicken out and fry it briefly before slicing, for a firmer surface". Padang makes it the method and takes it further, to crisp. And that page's reason for slicing rather than shredding — "Shredded chicken soaks up broth and goes limp quickly." — holds here too: once the broth is on, even the fried beef slowly takes it up, so eat it as soon as it is poured.

The basics behind this dish

Cooking basics →

More of the same kind

Soup →

More from this country

Indonesian →