Balado (food)


Balado is a type of hot and spicy bumbu found in Minang cuisine of West Sumatra, Indonesia. Balado sauce is made by stir frying ground red hot chili pepper with other spices including garlic, shallot, tomato and key lime juice in coconut or palm oil.
The ingredients are quite similar to sambal hot chili paste. However, unlike sambal—which is often treated as a separate dipping condiment, balado chili sauce is usually mixed and stir fried together with its main ingredients and treated as a dish. Balado is suitable for fried prawns, squid, fish, chicken, fried boiled eggs, fried beef, eggplant or potatoes.
Because of its almost identical ingredients and technique, the term balado is often interchangeable with sambal goreng. Nevertheless, the term balado is more specifically referring to Minang cooking tradition, while sambal goreng refers to a more general Indonesian cuisine tradition.

Variants

In Minang dialect the term balado literally means "with chili" or "in chili", since lado means "chili pepper" in Minang dialect. Thus the naming usually combined the main ingredient followed with "balado", for example:

In popular culture

Hot and spicy balado has become an inspiration for a popular dangdut song, "Sambalado", sung by Ayu Tingting.