Market Stall Salad · Sweet-Spicy Fruit Toss
Penang Rojak
Photo: Alpha from Melbourne, Australia / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
The dressing's thick, almost toffee-like body comes from hae ko, a black, treacly prawn paste that Penang is known for producing; it is a different product from the dried belacan block used in most Malaysian cooking.
Cucumber, pineapple, green mango, and jicama are tossed with fried tofu puffs, crisp fried dough fritters and cuttlefish in a dark, sticky dressing of hae ko (black prawn paste), tamarind, chilli, and 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 — 3443 dishes from 118 countries.
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