Market Stall Salad · Sweet-Spicy Fruit Toss
Penang Rojak
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Its dressing is deliberately made thick and almost toffee-like — a texture distinctive enough that Penangites claim they can spot a rojak from another state on sight.
Cucumber, pineapple, green mango, and jicama are tossed with fried tofu puffs and squid fritters in a dark, sticky dressing of fermented shrimp paste, tamarind, chilli, and palm sugar, then showered with crushed roasted peanuts. Hawkers chop the fruit to order at roadside carts and night markets across the island.
Why it's made this way: Penang's version stands apart from fruit rojak eaten elsewhere in Malaysia by leaning into tart, unripe fruit and a heavier, sweeter dressing — a regional signature shaped by the island's Chinese and Malay hawker cross-pollination.
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Part of World of Street Food — 3248 dishes from 118 countries.
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