About this recipe
A Balinese slow-cooked chicken, rubbed and stuffed with base genep — the island's foundational spice paste — then wrapped and cooked for hours until the meat pulls apart and the paste has gone into it. Base genep is more complex than the spice pastes elsewhere in this chapter, and building it properly is most of the work.
Recipe facts
- Yield
- 4–6 servings
- Prep
- 45 minutes
- Cook
- 3 hours
- Total
- 225 minutes
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Spice
- Hot
Allergens Contains chicken, shellfish (terasi) and tree nuts (candlenuts). Gluten-free. Dairy-free.
Development draft. This is an untested development recipe from the cookbook project. It has not been kitchen-tested, and the quantities and timings are the author’s working draft rather than a verified result.
Ingredients
Base genep (Balinese spice paste)
- 10 shallots
- 8 cloves garlic
- 2 in (5 cm) fresh turmeric
- 2 in (5 cm) galangal (lengkuas)
- 1 in (2.5 cm) fresh ginger
- 1 in (2.5 cm) fresh kencur (aromatic ginger), if available
- 6 candlenuts (kemiri)
- 8 red chillies, plus 4 bird's eye chillies for heat
- 2 stalks lemongrass, tender part only
- 1 tsp (5 g) terasi, toasted
- 1 tsp (2 g) ground coriander
- 1/2 tsp (1 g) ground white pepper
- 1/4 tsp (0.5 g) freshly grated nutmeg
- 4 tbsp (60 ml) coconut oil, for frying
- 2 tsp (12 g) salt
The chicken
- 1 whole chicken, about 3.5 lb (1.6 kg)
- 8 oz (225 g) cassava leaves or spinach, blanched and squeezed dry (optional stuffing)
- 3 daun salam (Indonesian bay leaves)
- 2 stalks lemongrass, bruised
- Banana leaves for wrapping, or a tightly lidded dish
- 1/2 cup (120 ml) water
Equipment
- Blender or large mortar and pestle
- Frying pan
- Deep roasting dish with a lid, or banana leaves plus foil
- Kitchen twine
Method
- Blend the shallots, garlic, turmeric, galangal, ginger, kencur, candlenuts, both kinds of chilli, lemongrass, toasted terasi, ground coriander, white pepper and nutmeg to a smooth paste.
- Heat the coconut oil in a frying pan over medium heat and fry the paste, stirring, 10–12 minutes, until deeply fragrant, darkened, and the oil separates. Stir in the salt and cool completely.
- Reserve about a third of the paste. Mix another third through the blanched greens if using.
- Pat the chicken dry. Rub a third of the paste all over the outside and under the loosened breast skin.
- Stuff the cavity with the greens mixture, the daun salam and the bruised lemongrass. Tie the legs together with twine.
- Smear the reserved paste over the outside of the bird. Wrap tightly in several layers of banana leaf, or set it in a deep dish with the water and cover very tightly with foil and a lid.
- Cook in a 300°F/150°C oven for 2 hours 30 minutes.
- Uncover, baste with the pan juices, and cook a further 25–30 minutes at 350°F/175°C to dry and colour the surface.
- Rest 15 minutes. Pull the meat apart at the table rather than carving into neat slices, and spoon over the concentrated paste and juices from the dish.
The Complete Edition
Ayam Betutu sits in the Indonesia chapter
The book carries this recipe in full alongside the rest of the Indonesia chapter, the pastes and dips it is built on, and the twenty-seven pantry studies that open the collection.
In review with Amazon KDP
Both editions have been submitted to Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing and are currently in review. Submitted prices are $9.99 for the kindle edition and $49.99 for the paperback. Neither is on sale yet, and prices are as submitted rather than final.