Vegetable Fritters, Bakwan!

I believe maybe you've heard me talk about gorengan here. So, let's talk about bakwan this time!

Bakwan is one of gorengan here. If I translate it, this food is known as vegetable fritters. Well, maybe you can say it's like vegetable tempura.

A plate of bakwan. Photo by restyu,

This food is one of the most common fried food in Indonesian cuisine. It's sometimes categorized as a side dish, but I can say it's also a snack.

These vegetable fritters are commonly made from carrots, bean sprouts, cabbage, and green onions. But there's some bakwan that use protein such as prawn too.

I almost forget to mention that there's bakwan jagung too. It's also called dadar jagung but I usually call it bakwan jagung. Bakwan jagung is made from corn since jagung is the Indonesian word for corn.

The batter for bakwan is mixed with wheat flour, rice flour, water, and egg. For the seasoning, we use bumbu putih which consists of garlic, shallot, pepper, coriander seeds, salt, and MSG.

You can buy bakwan easily on the warung or the gorengan stall. It is quite cheap like one bakwan only costs Rp1.000. You can eat bakwan with green bird eyes chili or sambal. It depends on your taste anyway.

There are 2 types of bakwan that I usually find. One is cooked like a ball-shaped dough and the other one is flat. Oh well, pardon my weird explanation. It's hard for me to explain somehow.

Bakwan that looks like a ball. Photo by restyu.

For the bakwan that looks like a ball. It has a crispy texture outside but on the inside, it is slightly chewy and fluffy.

Flat bakwan and yes I rolled it so I can hold it easily. Photo by restyu.

For the flat bakwan. It's more crispy than the previous one.

How about the taste? Well, it tastes the same as long it uses the same seasoning.

But if you ask me what's my favorite I'll answer the flat one is the best. I prefer to get a crunchy texture on every bite whenever I eat gorengan.

To be honest, making bakwan isn't that hard. It's easy, especially since there's instant bakwan flour right now. All you need is just to prepare the sliced vegetables, put them in the batter, and fried them. Tada, you have bakwan now.

Well, maybe I'll write about making bakwan next time. Let's try to make bakwan using instant bakwan flour first. But, there's also a probability for me to make bakwan jagung too if I have the ingredients. I think, let's just wait and see for my writing about bakwan next time.

—restyu, 070822.