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Soto Daging - Indonesian Beef Soup
Indonesian soto daging (beef soup) is one of the easiest soup to prepare, basically a dump and forget kind of soup, and perfect for busy days.
I was looking through the recipes that I have published so far, and I could not believe I haven’t shared this super delicious soto daging to this day. This is one of the very first soto recipes I learn to make when I started having to cook for myself back in college days, which is more than a decade ago, and this suddenly makes me feel old [depressed]. I was taking some college classes in Malaysia and then halfway I transferred to a college in the Midwest. I was freaked out that I still had so… many courses I needed to graduate, I played catch up and took like 22-24 credits each semester for 2 1/2 years toward my graduation. Crazy times.
Even when I was so swamped with school work, I still managed to find time in weekends to do grocery and prepare food for 1 whole week. Two reasons, the first one being it was so much cheaper to cook my own food than eating out, and the second one was because I was so sick and tired of eating out even if I had the money, which I didn’t, which probably contributed to the quality of the take-out food I resorted to in the first place. What I prepared back then was nothing fancy of course, and I gravitated to soups like this since I can make a huge batch that lasted for at least a week. I have to admit back then my dishes most likely didn’t taste as good as now, and definitely not nearly as pretty ;)
Soto Daging - Indonesian Beef Soup
Ingredients
- 1 kilogram beef stew cuts
- 8 cups (2 liter) water
- 3 lemongrass, greener top part (reserve 3" bottom whiter part for spice paste)
- 10 kaffir lime leaves (Indonesian: daun jeruk)
- 4 Indonesian bay leaves (Indonesian: daun salam)
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 1 star anise
- 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1 1/2 tablespoon salt, or to taste
- Spice paste (grind the following together)
- 80 gram shallot
- 6 cloves garlic
- 3 lemongrass, bottom 3" whiter part
- 1 inch galangal
- 1 inch ginger
- 1 teaspoon pepper
- 1 teaspoon coriander seeds/powder
- 1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds/powder
- 1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
- Garnish
- 2 scallions, thinly sliced
- 4 stalks cilantro, thinly sliced
- sambal oelek
- deep fried shallot flakes (Indonesian: bawang merah goreng)
- lime wedges
- sweet soy sauce (Indonesian: kecap manis)
Instructions
- In a soup pot, boil together beef, water, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, Indonesian bay leaves, cinnamon stick, star anise, and nutmeg. Reduce heat and simmer until the meat is tender. About 1 to 2 hours.
- Heat 4 tablespoon of oil in a frying pan on medium heat. Sauté spice paste until cooked and fragrant, about 5 minutes.
- Once the meat is tender, return the soup to a boil. Add the fried spice paste and seasoned the soup with salt. Adjust the amount of salt as needed.
- Reduce heat to a simmer, and cook for another 10 minutes.
- Turn off heat. Serve the soup hot with garnishes and steamed white rice.
Comments
I made this yesterday :) I didn't use cinnamon and star anise, because my husband doesn't really like the smell. But, it's still delicious!
I am glad you and your hubby loves it Steph :)
It's delicious and easy, even easier than soto ayam, I will make this often! Thanks for the recipe!
White pepper or black pepper?
Hi Molly, Indonesian dishes mainly use white pepper, but if you only have black pepper at home, you can use that too.
I’m looking forward to try this recipe! My daughter had a taste of beef soup from Austin food truck ( Indonesian chef) and she said that she’ll eat soup if I make one like it. So I will definitely try this recipe. 🥰
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