Surabaya Warung Classic · Black Beef Soup
Rawon
Photo: Ardhan Febriansyah / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
The soup's jet-black color comes from kluwek, the seed of the kepayang tree, which contains hydrogen cyanide when fresh and must be boiled and fermented before it's safe to cook with.
Beef is slow-simmered in a dark, deeply savory broth colored and flavored by fermented kluwek nuts, along with lemongrass, galangal, and candlenut, then served over rice with bean sprouts, salted egg, and a spoon of chili paste. East Java's street warungs keep the broth simmering in huge pots all day.
Why it's made this way: Rawon is widely said to appear as 'rarawwan' in the 901 CE Taji Inscription from the ancient Mataram Kingdom, and it later became a Majapahit-era delicacy — a claim repeated across countless food-history sources even as some scholars dispute the inscription's exact wording.
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Part of World of Street Food — 3443 dishes from 118 countries.
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