A variety of Vegetable soup in Jakarta is spread widely in various parts of Jakarta. A few kinds of the dish include sayur asem, a vegetable soup with various ingredients with sour and savory broth, sayur bayam, spinach soup with clear broth, and sayur lodeh, a vegetable soup dish with coconut milk broth.
As an agricultural country, Indonesia produces many varieties of vegetables. So, it is normal to find dish creation with vegetables as main ingredients. One of them is sayur asem. Sayur asem is popular widely all over Indonesian. It has many versions from East to West, such as Sumatera, Jakarta, West Java, and Kalimantan version. The most popular version of soup in Jakarta in the capital city is sayur asem Jakarta. The vegetables that are used from ingredients such as long beans, peanuts, young jackfruit, melinjo, vegetable starfruit, chayote, tamarind, and corn.
The difference of sayur asem Jakarta from version of other areas are in thicker and richer broth as its use many kinds of Indonesian spices, which is shrimp paste, candlenuts, and chili peppers. It has a savory, sour, sweet, and a little spicy flavor.
Another kind of vegetable soup in Jakarta is sayur bayam, it is a simple dish made from spinach and clear broth, usually seasoned only with sugar, pepper, and salt. For Javanese version, it is dominant in sweet flavor. But in other areas, some people prefer it to be saltier.
As for sayur lodeh, it is a bit similar with sayur asem. Also using a few kinds of vegetables such as chayote, long beans, eggplant, bitter bean, tempeh, chili, and small corn, completed with coconut milk broth. It is rather thick if compared to the other types of soup in Jakarta and has a dominant savory and sweet flavor.
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