Crispy Vegetable Fritters Indonesian Snacks - Bakwan - Much Butter (2024)

Crispy vegetable fritters or bakwan is one of famous street food snacks in Indonesia. It’s often served with green bird’s eye chili or sweet and savory peanut sauce. Bakwan is also vegan.

In Indonesia there is one of traditional street food called bakwan or vegetable fritter. For those of you who don’t know what bakwan is, let me introduce it.

Crispy vegetable fritters or Bakwan is an Indonesian traditional food made from vegetables and wheat flour. The vegetables we often use for this snack is carrot and cabbage. Usually Indonesian make it vegan friendly, but it’s also a common thing to add shrimps.

We Indonesians often sell it with another kinds of fritters such as fried tofu filled with vegetables (tahu isi), fried spring rolls, crispy fried tempeh (tempe goreng), and many more. All of them is mostly vegan friendly. But because it is fried, you can’t eat it so often to manage your health.

This crispy snack is so popular in Indonesia that almost all roadsides sell it. More over, it’s also so cheap. You can get 5 vegetable fritters for about USD 1. Soon I will share another Indonesian fritters recipe here on Much Butter blog.

How to make crispy vegetable fritters:

Cut the carrot julienne style with 2 inches length and shredded the cabbage with sharp knife. Set aside.

Crush shallot, garlic, mushroom stock powder, salt, and black pepper with mortar and pestle until all become a paste. If you don’t have mortar and pestle, you can use electric spice grinder.

In a large bowl add flour, cabbage, carrot, spice paste, and water. Then mix to combine with a spoon.

Heat the cooking oil in a large skillet pan over medium-high heat. After that drop about 1.5 tbsp of vegetable batter into the pan. Flatten it with a spatula.

Add more batter, leaving about 1 inch of space between the fritters. Fry for about 2-3 minutes until the bottom is golden brown. Then flip and continue frying for 2 minutes until all the sides is golden brown and crispy.

After frying remove fritters from pan and drain on paper towels. Continue frying a new batch of vegetable batter. You will get about 15-20 vegetable fritters.

Enjoy the crispy vegetable fritters with sweet and salty peanut sauce.