Sundanese Fried Snack · Tapioca Fritters
Cireng
Photo: AWG97 / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
The name is literally an acronym for 'aci digoreng' — fried tapioca starch — a snack humble enough that its whole identity is just a description of the cooking method.
A dough of tapioca starch, garlic, and scallion is fried until the outside turns golden and shatteringly crisp while the inside stays dense and chewy, then dipped in a spicy soy-chili sauce. Vendors once pedaled bicycle carts through Bandung's neighborhoods frying it fresh to order.
Why it's made this way: It rose out of Bandung's Parahyangan highlands in the 1980s as a cheap bicycle-cart snack and has since spread into a nationwide fried-food trend with countless flavor spinoffs.
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Part of World of Street Food — 3248 dishes from 118 countries.
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