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Fried Tempeh with Chili Sauce
Thinly sliced tempeh, deep-fried until crispy and golden brown. With an awesomely delicious savory, sweet, sour, and spicy chili and coconut palm sugar sauce.
For many Indonesians, tempeh is almost always fried one way or another. The simplest way to prepare and cook tempeh is to cut it into thin slices, lightly salt both sides, and pan-fry with a little oil until both sides are golden brown.
This recipe for fried tempeh with chili sauce is slightly more advance than a simple pan-frying, but it is using simple ingredients, and the extra effort is worth it. You will end up with crispy and crunchy tempeh, with a savory, sweet, sour, and spicy glace in every bite.
Ingredients for fried tempeh with chili sauce
This recipe needs soybean tempeh, ginger, red chilies, lime juice, coconut palm sugar, and salt.
Soybean tempeh
Indonesian tempeh is made from soybeans. You can buy tempeh from different beans or even a mixture of beans and grains in the US, but if you want an authentic Indonesian dish, please use soybean tempeh.
If your market doesn’t sell tempeh, making tempeh from scratch is a fun project. I have a homemade tempeh recipe that will guide you to make tempeh at home.
Coconut palm sugar
Palm sugar is called gula Jawa, gula aren, or gula kelapa. They are typically sold in blocks or cylinders. To use, you will need to cut the sugar with a sharp knife and chop it into smaller pieces. Nowadays, you can buy the granulated version too which is convenient.
Some good substitutes for Indonesian palm sugar are Malaysian gula Melaka, Thai palm sugar, coconut palm sugar, or even dark brown sugar.
Red chilies
I love using birds-eye chilies (Indonesian: cabe rawit) to make this dish, but they can be too spicy for people who are not used to eating a lot of chilies. For a milder dish, try using cayenne or Fresno instead.
If you are out of fresh red chilies, feel free to use dried red chilies too. Simply soak in hot water first until the chilies are soft before using them.
Frying thinly sliced tempeh
The key to crispy and crunchy tempeh is to slice them thinly and fry in hot oil.
First, fill a pot with about 2 inches of oil and heat on medium until the oil is hot. You can tell that the oil is ready when a piece of tempeh drop into the hot oil sizzles immediately.
Next, deep fry tempeh for about 5-7 minutes, or until they turn golden brown and crispy. Remove tempeh from hot oil and drain on a wire rack, a stainless steel strainer, or a paper towel.
Prepare the spicy chili sauce
The final part of this dish is to prepare the sauce to coat the fried tempeh.
Heat about 2 tablespoons of oil in a wok on medium-high heat, stir fry the ginger until fragrant, then add the chili, lime juice, salt, and coconut palm sugar. Cook until sugar turns to liquid and starts to bubble and caramelize.
Quickly return the fried tempeh into the wok, and gently toss until the sauce coats the tempeh evenly. Transfer tempeh to a serving plate and serve with steamed white rice.
Fried Tempeh with Chili Sauce
Ingredients
- 450 gram (1 lb) tempeh
- 2 inches ginger, peeled, and cut into match sticks
- 8 red chili, make diagonal slices
- juice from 1 lime
- 2 tablespoon coconut palm sugar, or brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- enough oil for deep frying
Instructions
- Slice the tempeh into very thin slices, about 2 cm wide x 4 cm long x as thin as you can manage.
- Heat enough oil for deep frying in a pot/wok. Deep fry the tempeh for about 5-7 minutes until golden brown and crispy. Remove and drain on paper towel. If your pot/wok is a bit small, you can do this in batches.
- In another pan/wok, heat about 2 tablespoon of oil on medium-high heat, stir fry the ginger until fragrant, then add the chili, lime juice, salt, and sugar and cook until sugar has turn to liquid and starts to bubble and caramelize.
- Add the fried tempeh and toss until all tempeh chips are fully coated with the sauce. Remove from heat and serve with steamed white rice.
Comments
Dear Anita, I found your lovely and yummy Indonesian food blog while doing a google search for a dish with tempeh! I'm surprised there are not more comments. I made the recipe this evening following your easy directions and we had the dish for a light supper, as we had a big lunch mid day! Keep up the good work! Smiles, Chip in Sunny Florida
Dear Chip, thank you for trying out the recipe and the feedback :) I hope you will give other recipes a try in the future ♥
Dear Anita, Thank you so much for your recipes; I grew up in the Dutch East Indies ( am 74 now and living in Florida) and my sister always had Tempeh Kecap in a container, and my brother in law and I would sneakily eat some of it before dinner; my sister knew we were doing it, but let it slide, haha I finally found some Tempeh hidden away at the Publix store's cold section. All I had with me was some sketchy explanation on how to make it, until I googled it and came on your site. What is so amazing is that I didn't think anyone would publish the recipe...so a big THANK YOU to you ! And thanks for the link to the printer, sure is a handy link !
Hi Ronald, thank you for your kind words. It is indeed one of those simple recipes that people assume everyone knows how to do it and rarely bother to publish. I myself was only forced to learn all these "simple" recipes when living far away from home and miss all my Mom's home cooked food. Again, I am happy you find my recipes to be helpful. Cheers! :)
This fried tempeh looks absolutely incredible. I love chili sauce with most things and this sounds like the perfect accompaniment to the tempeh!
I have never had this ever but sounds interesting and looks like family will enjoy it too. Need to try on it.
This was a to-die for-recipe!! My whole family loved it and ate it right up!
What a delicious recipe! I can almost taste those beautiful savory flavors right now. I'll be making and serving this dish with white rice and a crisp green salad for dinner. Yum. Yum!
Yum! That flavor blend of chili, lemon and ginger sounds so amazing!
I'm a sucker for anything with chili sauce - it just has that perfect combination of sweet and kicky! And your fried tempeh looks just perfect. Hopefully mine looks just as good!
This looks so good and I know my kids would love it. It's so simple and easy to prepare!
This is such a nice and creative way to cook tempeh. I love it. I'll try your tempeh recipe and then use it to make this dish!
My family and I absolutely loved this recipe! It was a big hit here and definitely going to be making this again.
Hi Anita! Just wanted to let you know we've been enjoying your blog so much this past week. We discovered your recipes after deciding to spend a week cooking Indonesian food as part of a "travel by cooking" idea we're playing with while we're stuck at home! This recipe was absolutely delicious as were all the others we've made so far. Thank you for helping us learn to cook authentic Indonesian food!
What's not to love about tempeh?! I find a really nice combination is gulai daun sinkong with tempeh added to it, it's a spectacular marriage. Enak banget!
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