Recipe: Kerak Telor Yang Mudah (Easy Indonesian Crusted Egg)

Kerak telor : not so little tummy style

This month Our beloved city, Jakarta; celebrate its 487 birthday (YAY!) and because of  that, we are making Kerak telor! One of the most well-known Jakarta’s food! Plus! This is our first recipe post! (DOUBLE YAY!)

Kerak Telor (Easy Indonesian Crusted Egg)

• Servings: 4
• Time: 30mins
• Difficulty: easy
• Print

The basic ingredients of kerak telor.

Ingredients:

• 80 gr cooked glutinous rice (in rice form, not flour one)
• 100 gr toasted dessicated coconut (steps on how to make toasted dessicated coconut)
• 3 chicken eggs
• 15 gr dried ebi
• 1 tbs Vegetable oil for cooking (you can use whatever you have in the kitchen)
• Fresh cayenne pepper (as many as you like, as spicy as you want, we use about 6 ceyenne pepper and 4 bird eye pepper, we love spicy foods!)
• 3 cm fresh galanga
• 1 cm fresh ginger
• Sugar
• pinch of white pepper powder.
• Fried shallot for garnish.

Recipe:

How to cook kerak telor. From left to right : step 1, step 2, step 4 & 5, step7

1. Work with your pestel and mortar! Grind that galanga, ginger, fresh cayenne pepper, finish it with white pepper powder! You can also use food processor, but personally we love the texture of pepper flake.
2. Prep your wok, put some oil on it! saute all the grinded spice to enhance the aroma.
3. Place your glutinous rice on a bowl, crack some eggs to it, sugar and the sauteed grinded spice (it sounds ridiculous, but technically right, right?). Please remember to put the sauteed grinded spice little by little to your liking (we tend to go all out with our spice, it might be way too much for anybody else). And blend it!
4. Pour it on a oiled clean wok, set on medium heat, from the center work your way out, It should be about 1-1,5 cm thick! Close the wok with a lid to trap the heat inside
5. Every 1 minute or so, open the lid, and press it again using spatula to maintain the shape, If it’s already got harden, flip! Cook till both side become golden brown!
6. Already golden brown? Turn down the heat!
7. Now put generous amount of toasted dessicated coconut and ebi on top. At this point you actually can eat it! but we always fold it to half, put another batch of toasted dessicated coconut, dried ebi and fried shallot on top.

Our recipe is already shorten and simplified, the authentic recipe will require you to soak uncooked glutinous rice overnight (8 hours minimum) and to literally, flip the wok with the batter inside to burn the batter till it cooked (abang kerak telor-asian acrobat cooking style! Whattaaa!). We don’t want you to burn your wok nor yourself, so to be safe,  just flip that batter like us (read: newbie). Easy peasy. Let the abang kerak telor do the pro stuff.

P.S : ‘Abang’ means older man in Betawi’s language. In Jakarta (used to be Betawi) we usually called any male seller with this term and the term for female is called ‘Mbak’ Just in case you want to know 😉

Tips:

desiccated coconut and ebi texture.

• When we say “Now put generous amount of toasted desiccated coconut and ebi on top”, we meant it! Nothing will go wrong with it, since the main flavor of kerak telor should be savory from the coconut and spice with sweet hint from sugar.
• Beside using chicken egg, you can also use duck egg. The different between chicken egg and duck egg is duck egg have a special taste that will enhance the flavor of your kerak telor.
• If you like sweet flavor, you can also add sugar on top. The original recipe used a bit more sugar than what is shown here, so when you eat it, there will be a “crunch” from your sugar texture (It’s all come down to the texture, and it was good!)

A’bit about kerak telor and Jakarta:

• We heard glutinous rice is gluten free and safe for celiac disease!
• Kerak telor as we write before is one of the most well-known Jakarta food originated from the native betawi people.
• When we were a little girl, we can buy it everyday, but now this delicacy become quite rare, a lot of Jakarta’s traditional food diminishing, you can only find them in some spot, or in Jakarta’s birthday month.
• Jakarta birth date is 22 June (FYI. Sarah’s birthday is 20 June, Sarah add that one), we celebrate Jakarta birthday with Pekan Raya Jakarta or some people might call it Jakarta Fair, a month long exhibition where you could watch music concert, hoard on discounted goods, this year we also have beauty pageant contest, and of course, eat some kerak telor.

We hope you like this recipe, if you cook it, please tell us your opinion! And if you have a question about our recipe you can also ask us, we are just one comment away!

Keep filling your tummy!

XOXO,

Sarah & Dina