Ikan bakar

Ikan bakar
	Ikan Bakar, grilled red snapper served with sambal
Course	Main course
Place of origin	Indonesia and Malaysia
Region or state	Southeast Asia
Created by	Indonesians and Malay
Serving temperature	Hot
Main ingredients	Fish, seasoned with garlic, shallots and other spices grilled on charcoal
	Media: Ikan bakar;

Ikan bakar is a generic term that refers to various kinds of Indonesian and Malaysian dishes of charcoal-grilled fish or other forms of seafood. Ikan bakar literally means "burned fish" in Malay and Indonesian.

As an archipelagic nation ikan bakar is very popular in Indonesia, especially in its eastern region; Sulawesi and Maluku where most of the people work as fishermen, and both areas have a vast sea which brings them different kind of seafood.^[1] Usually, the fish is marinated with mixture of spices pastes, and sometimes with belacan or kecap manis (sweet soy sauce) and then grilled; sometimes protected with a sheet of banana leaf placed between the seafood and grill to avoid the fish being stuck to the grill and broken to pieces.^[1]

Marination and spices

The fish is usually marinated with the mixture of sweet soy sauce and coconut oil or margarine, applied with a brush during grilling. The spices mixture may vary among regions and places, but usually it consists of a combination of ground shallot, garlic, chili pepper, coriander, tamarind juice, candlenut, turmeric, galangal and salt. In Java and most of Indonesia, ikan bakar usually tastes rather sweet because the generous amount of sweet soy sauce either as marination or dipping sauce. While the ikan bakar of Minangkabau (Padang), most of Sumatra and also Malay peninsula, usually more spicier and yellow-reddish in color because the generous amount of chili pepper, turmeric and other spices, and the absence of sweet soy sauce.

Ikan bakar is usually served with sambal belacan (chili with shrimp paste) or sambal kecap (sliced chili and shallot in sweet soy sauce) as dipping sauce or condiment and slices of lemon as garnishing. The East Indonesian Manado and Maluku ikan bakar usually uses dabu-dabu or colo-colo condiment.

Variants

There are many variants of ikan bakar, differ from the recipes of marinate spices, dipping sauces or sambals, to the species of fishes being grilled. Almost all kind of fish and seafood can be made into ikan bakar, the most popular are freshwater gourami, patin (pangasius) and ikan mas (carp), to seafood tongkol or cakalang (skipjack tuna), bawal (pomfret), tenggiri (wahoo), kuwe (trevally), baronang (rabbitfish), kerapu (garoupa), kakap merah (red snapper), and pari (stingray). Some of the popular forms of seafood besides fish include sotong (squid), and udang (shrimp).