The Chicken And Rice Cookbook: Mutton Satay Recipe

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What kind of food is satay?

A satay is a southeast Asian dish of small chunks of meat, coated in a sweet nutty sauce. The meat is served on skewers alongside the dipping sauce, and can be enjoyed as a light starter or as part of a bigger spread. You will often find satay skewers being cooked over large grills on the street across southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia or Thailand.

Satay sauce recipes change slightly depending where in the world you eat it. For instance in the Malaysian version below, the sauce uses whole peanuts and includes the sweet-sharp tang of tamarind. Meanwhile, a Thai satay sauce is more often flavoured with coconut and has a smoother, runnier peanut sauce.

What is satay sauce used for?

The distinctive peanut satay sauce can be used with several different types of meat. The recipe below uses mutton, but you can just as easily serve chicken skewers, or diced lamb. Or go for a vegetarian dish, and serve satay sauce with braised greens and noodles. You can also serve the smooth peanut sauce to dress an Indonesian gado-gado style salad of blanched vegetables, boiled potato, fried tofu and soft-boiled eggs.

This recipe is an extract of Shu Han Lee's first cookbook Chicken and Rice. Read more about Southeast Asian cooking with Shu here.

"These delicious skewers of spice-marinated meat are found across many Southeast Asian cultures, but I am partial to the Malay-style satay that I grew up with. The whiff of smoke and satay spices would immediately transport me back to Sunday afternoons, when the neighbourhood Satay Man would come around touting his wares illegally.

"My sisters and I would wait impatiently for his honking, and then run to his motorbike-driven mobile kitchen at the first ‘toot toot!’ We brought our own plate and bowl, and he would pile the plate high with sticks of freshly grilled satay, pressed rice cakes and cucumbers, and fill our bowl generously with homemade peanut sauce.

"The peanut sauce is one of the most distinct and important aspects of Malay satay – it is rich, chunky and aromatic with freshly roasted peanuts and, unlike the Thai satay peanut sauce, flavoured with tamarind instead of coconut."

Browse more southeast Asian recipes here, or browse our extensive collection of southeast Asian food and ingredients for more inspiration.

For the skewers

300g boneless mutton shoulder (You can also use lamb shoulder, beef steak or chicken thighs.)
20 wooden skewers

For the marinade

10 shallots
2 cloves of garlic
4 stalks of lemongrass, white part only, bruised
2 slices of galangal
2 tablespoons ground coriander
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1⁄2 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon sea salt
2 teaspoons light soy sauce
120g unrefined cane sugar
3 tablespoons groundnut oil

For the peanut sauce

1 tablespoon tamarind pulp
200g skinless roasted peanuts
4 dried red chillies, soaked leftover marinade
3 tablespoons groundnut oil
1 tablespoon of unrefined light brown sugar, or to taste big pinches of sea salt, to taste

For serving

Cucumber slices roughly chopped
Red onion roughly chopped

Method for mutton satay

Cut the mutton into 2.5cm long strips about 2cm thick, or get your butcher to do it for you. Blend or pound the ingredients for the marinade together to get a fine paste. Place the meat in the marinade and let it sit overnight. Soak the skewers in water overnight too, to prevent them from burning later.
The next day, thread the mutton pieces on to skewers, reserving the marinade.
Make the peanut sauce before you grill the meat, or if you have a minion to help you, you could do both at once. Soak the tamarind in 250ml of hot water for 15 minutes, until softened. Massage and squeeze to get the juices from the pulp, then strain and discard the pulp. Place half the peanuts in the food processor and pulse to roughly chop. Set aside. Finely grind the remaining peanuts – these ground peanuts help to thicken the sauce. Set aside.
Blend the soaked chillies with the reserved marinade to make a rempah spice paste. Fry the paste in the groundnut oil slowly over a medium low heat, until fragrant. Pour in the watery tamarind paste, along with the ground and chopped peanuts, and simmer for 30 minutes. Season to taste with sugar and salt, then reduce by boiling, or thin out with water as needed. The sauce should be deep golden and have a rich, but pourable consistency.
When ready to cook, fire up your barbecue, or preheat the oven to 190°C/ gas 5. Grill the mutton skewers over indirect heat until nearly cooked through, about 4 minutes each side, then shift them over to a high heat and grill for about 1 minute on each side, or until golden-brown and charred. Alternatively, cook in the oven for 15 minutes, then turn the oven setting to ‘grill’ and grill until lightly charred, flipping the skewers midway.
Serve the satay straight away, with plenty of peanut sauce and slices of cucumber and red onion.

About the author

Shu Han Lee is a Singaporean cook, illustrator and designer. The Sunday Times named her as one of Britain's best food bloggers (www.mummyicancook.com), and she frequently hosts supper clubs, pop-ups and workshops. Born and raised in Singapore, Shu Han Lee now lives in London. She is a cookery writer and author of Chicken and Rice, Southeast Asian recipes from a London Kitchen. And she also runs her own business; rempapa.