Ayam betutu is one of the famous traditional Balinese chicken dish, packs with spices, flavors, and most of all heat from the chilies! Surely it is a dish that we just have to have whenever we visit Bali and the one that make us miss Bali. There is this famous restaurant chain that serves “so-called” best ayam betutu in Bali, Ayam Betutu Gilimanuk with its Petruk trademark logo 🙂 A very very yummy ayam betutu indeed, their steamed version are super-duper spicy. I have cried my eyes out eating this at the restaurant (non air-conditioned) during a hot afternoon and yet I am loving it!
Now back in Sydney, it is kind of difficult to find one and I have never really thought of making it myself either considering the amount of spices used and possibly high skill of cooking technique maybe. Then on one day I stumbled onto a YouTube video by Dapur Dina, the way she explains step-by-step process very clear has inspired me to try it myself as well. Another reason is because I have bought 1 kg pack of frozen banana leaves and turned out 1 kg is a lot!
So here we go, this is the recipe that I got from Dapur Dina and combined with few other sources. Actually, this is the second time I made this so I tweaked the recipe a little bit and instead of using whole chicken, hubby kindly chopped it to 8 pieces 🙂 Because I don’t use whole chicken, I just lay the kale on the base of the pan hoping it will still be able to catch of the juices from the chicken and it did! I will try just steam it next time and hopefully it will be similar to the steamed version at Ayam Betutu Gilimanuk, with plenty of hot and spicy sauce.
What you need:
- Banana leaves
- 1 whole chicken, rubbed with 1 tablespoon of lemon juice then set aide
- 5 pieces of lime leaves (daun jeruk purut)
- 2 pieces of bay leaves (daun salam)
- 1 bunch of kale leaves, blanched with boiling water for 1 minute, then let it drained
- oil
- salt, sugar and pepper to taste
Blend these ingredients:
- 3 shallots (bawang merah)
- 5 garlic cloves (bawang putih)
- 10 candle nuts (kemiri)
- 3 lemongrass stalks, cut to slices (sereh)
- 2 red chilies (cabe merah besar)
- 5 bird eye chilies, feel free to add more or less to your taste (cabe rawit)
- 1 tsp ground nutmeg (pala)
- 1.5 tsp ground ginger (jahe)
- 1.5 tsp ground coriander seed (ketumbar)
- 1.5 tsp ground galangal root (lengkuas)
- 1 tsp shrimp paste (terasi)
- 1 tsp lemon juice
First of all, blend all the spices with two tablespoon of oil.
After it became a smooth paste, fry with medium heat with 4 tablespoon of oil, lime leaves and bay leaves. Keep stirring while frying the blended marinate mixture. I added about 2 teaspoons salt, 1 teaspoon sugar and a lot of pepper, but please adjust to your taste. Keep frying until the mixture is thoroughly cooked, the fragrant will be stronger as it cooks and the oil will separate from the blended mixture. Then set aside to cool to room temperature.
Add about 1/2 of the marinate paste to kale leaves and mix well.
If using whole chicken, stuff the marinated kale leaves to the cavity of the chicken. If using chicken pieces, lay the kale leaves on the base of your pan on top of the banana leaves.
Rub the remaining marinate paste to all the chicken and place on top of the banana leaves or the kale leaves. Cover with banana leaves.
Steam for 90 minutes over medium to high heat, then bake in the preheated oven at 180C for another 60 minutes. For chicken pieces, I can cut down the baking time to 45 minutes and everything is beautifully cooked.
