Paleo Gado Gado Recipe

In each issue of Paleo Magazine, I share the story of a traditional recipe and adapt it to fit into a healthier paleo lifestyle.

In the article below, I took a deeper look at the Indonesian dish gado-gado, a salad that’s hearty enough to be a meal—and super easy to make. It’s great for filling you with energy during a post-holiday clean-up, and the bonus is that it doesn’t feel like a clean-up because it tastes so good!

Sure, you can refer to gado-gado as a “salad,” but only if you define salad as “colorful extravaganza of flavor explosions.”

Translated as “mix-mix” and pronounced GOD-o-GOD-o, gado-gado is a popular Indonesian one-plate meal. It combines raw vegetables, steamed vegetables, hard-boiled eggs, and a luscious peanut or cashew butter dressing topped with crispy fried shallots and ginger. While the vegetables are delicious, the true appeal of the dish is the dressing, a contrast of salty, sour, sweet, and spicy flavors. Truth: this dressing could make even shredded newspaper taste like a delicacy.

The Wall Street Journal proclaimed gado-gado a “morning-to-nighttime staple,” and its presentation can be both humble—a bowl of vegetables under a blanket of dressing—or elaborate. For special events like weddings, the gado-gado ingredients are piled into a wedding cake-like pyramid to serve to the celebrating crowd.

In Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia located on the island of Java, gado-gado is served all over the city. Each cook—from the kitchen of a five-star restaurant to a street-vendor’s cart—customizes gado-gado based on personal preference and available veggies. It’s often served with steamed rice or prawn crackers. There are usually a few slices of fried tofu, and the dressing may or may not be made with coconut milk. But there are a few fundamentals that define the dish: boiled potatoes and hard-boiled egg are a must, and the dressing should be served warm, mixed thoroughly with the room temperature salad ingredients. After eating gado-gado myself, I would argue that crispy shallots and fried ginger are also non-negotiable. Those two condiments make it a sexy way to eat your vegetables.

To add a bigger punch of protein, I modeled this recipe on one from a gado-gado stall in Jakarta that tops its salad with fried chicken, known as ayam goreng. I’ve also replaced the peanut butter found in most recipes with sunflower seed butter, but you could also use cashew butter to replicate an authentic taste. In Indonesian cuisine, cooks use shrimp paste known as terasi to add umami to their dressing. I’ve used the easier-to-find dried shrimp in my version. If you can’t find dried shrimp, you can substitute 1 whole anchovy or add a splash of fish sauce. (Red Boat is great!)

Feel free to play around with this recipe to suit your tastes. As William Wongso, host of the Indonesian TV show Cooking Adventure, explains: “Gado-gado has probably been around for as long as we’ve had nuts and chiles…. Everybody does it slightly differently. That’s the beauty. You can have it how you like it.”

Paleo Gado-Gado

Serves 4 | Whole30 approved when you omit the coconut sugar in the dressing

All of the ingredients can be prepared in advance and stored in the refrigerator for up to 5 days. To serve, bring all the ingredients to room temperature and heat the dressing so it can be drizzled, warm, over the salad ingredients.

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