Spicy Black Beef Soup (Rawon)

My first entry for "Masak Bareng Yuuk!" which means "Let's cook together!" organized by Ayin, Shinta and Deetha. This month dish is Rawon or Spicy black beef soup.
I can not really tell you the origin of Rawon except it is from Java island (but not from West Java). In Bandung,my hometown, Rawon is not very popular. The last time I ate Rawon was when I was in Indonesia a year ago. I was invited for lunch at my aunt's house and she served Rawon. I was about to skip the Rawon until my mother told me, it tasted delicious.


So I bought some ready made Rawon spices to try them in Erie. I did not have any chance to try them until I saw Ayin's blog promoting this month dish for Masak Bareng Yuuk!
It was not difficult to cook this dish as I followed the instruction at back of the packet and added in more chili sauce for extra spiciness.
This ready made Rawon spice can be bought in Chinese grocery stores that carry Indonesian food or any Indonesian grocery stores.

For this dish, you need,
Beef chunks preferably with some layers of fat, beansprouts, fried shallots and Indonesian shrimp/fish/melinjo nut crackers.
As the instruction said, you boiled the beef chunks until they are tender, retained about 3 cups of beef broth, added in the ready made Rawon spice and cooked again for a short while.
And of course, you need to assemble the whole soup before eating. In a deep bowl, add in some of the beansprouts, pour in the hot Rawon, sprinkle some fried shallots and extra slices of bird's eye chilies. Eat it with hot steam rice, some crackers and a cup of hot Indonesia tea.

For your information, typically Rawon will have dark color soup however mine was lighter as I kept adding water to make the beef extra tender.