The spice mixture may vary among regions, but usually it consists of a combination of ground shallot, garlic, Indian bay leaves, turmeric, lemongrass, tamarind juice, candlenut, galangal, salt and sugar. The chicken pieces are soaked and marinated in spice mixture for some time prior to frying, for the chicken to absorb the spices. The marination process might include heating the chicken in ground spices to assist the spice absorption. Most often prior to deep frying, ayam goreng is already half-cooked with yellowish colour tinted of turmeric. In Javanese, this process is called ungkep. The chicken is then deep fried in an ample amount of hot cooking oil, either palm or coconut oil. The chicken is well-fried until golden yellow. Some variant such as Javanese ayam goreng kremes might add the deep fried spiced flour as crispy granules. While in other recipes, these tasty granules is acquired from fried grated galangal or coconut. Ayam goreng is usually served with steamed rice, sambal terasi or sambal kecap as a dipping sauce or condiment and slices of cucumber and tomato for garnish. Fried tempeh and tofu might be added as side dishes.
Variants
There are many recipes of ayam goreng, among the popular ones are:
Ayam goreng lengkuas: galangal fried chicken. also known as hayam goreng Bandung: Sundanese Bandung styleayam goreng.
Ayam goreng Padang: Padang style ayam goreng, there are several variants of Padang fried chicken. The most popular one is quite similar to galangal fried chicken.
Ayam pop: Padang style skinless pale fried chicken, served with distinct sambal.
Ayam goreng balado: Padang or Minang style fried chicken. The fried chicken pieces is coated with spicy balado chili paste.
Ayam goreng lado ijo: a variant of Minang-style ayam goreng balado using green chili pepper.
Ayam goreng Kalasan: Javanese fried chicken from Kalasan village, Yogyakarta.
Ayam goreng kremes: Javanese fried chicken with kremes crispy granules.
Ayam goreng serundeng: Javanese fried chicken with serundeng grated coconut.
Pecel ayam: East Javanese ayam goreng served with sambal.
Ayam geprek: Yogyakarta crispy batteredayam goreng crushed and mixed with hot and spicysambal.
Ayam penyet: penyet is Javanese word for "squeezed" since the fried chicken is served in earthenware mortar upon sambal and squeezed with pestle to mix it with sambal.
Ayam goreng berempah: Malay fried chicken, fried till golden burnt with crunchy flour bits – signature of the dish.
In Indonesia and Malaysia various style of foreign fried chicken is often also called as ayam goreng. Common Southern United States fried chicken is often called ayam goreng tepung or flour-battered or breaded fried chicken. Common McDonald's fried chicken is marketed as "Ayam Goreng McD" in Malaysia.
