Skip to main content
Support

Browse by category

All categories
Home

Sauces and condiments from Indonesia

Fermented sambal (sambal fermentasi) and sambal tempoyaksambal fermentasi

Fermented sambal is a chilli paste whose chillies first sit sealed in a light salt and sugar brine before they are ground and cooked. In one recipe tested at a university in Bengkulu, red and green chillies ferment for 24 hours in 2–2.5 % salt, then are blanched, ground with shallot and garlic, cooked and jarred. Sambal tempoyak is made with tempoyak instead, durian flesh fermented with or without salt, in which lactic acid bacteria dominate.

Fully documentedSauces and condiments25 h

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceAmounts are from a tested lab recipe (Alpindo 2018) for 450 g of fermented chillies; the percentages after fermenting are of that 450 g. Village sambal has no fixed amounts.
Red curly chillies (cabe merah keriting)250 g[alpindo2018]
Green chillies200 g[alpindo2018]
Salt, dissolved in water, for the ferment2 % or 2.5 %[alpindo2018]
Sugar, dissolved in the same brine0.5 %[alpindo2018]
Shallot, added after fermenting20 %[alpindo2018]
Garlic, added after fermenting10 %[alpindo2018]
Salt and sugar for seasoning5 % salt and 13 % sugar[alpindo2018]
CMC (carboxymethylcellulose) as a thickener0 %, 0.5 % or 1 %Optional; the study tested all three levels[alpindo2018]

Total time across the recorded steps: 25 h

Start
Drag the bar or press Play

What changes: Starting material: fresh red and green chillies

Step 1 of 6
Wash the chillies
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
L. mesenteroides
Lactobacillus plantarum

Output: clean red and green chillies.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Fermented sambal is a chilli paste whose chillies first sit sealed in a light salt and sugar brine before they are ground and cooked. In one recipe tested at a university in Bengkulu, red and green chillies ferment for 24 hours in 2–2.5 % salt, then are blanched, ground with shallot and garlic, cooked and jarred. Sambal tempoyak is made with tempoyak instead, durian flesh fermented with or without salt, in which lactic acid bacteria dominate. Made in 6 steps over 25 h. The longest step, ferment the chillies in salt and sugar brine, takes 24 h (Alpindo A. 2018). Salt is 2–2.5 % (Alpindo A. 2018). Fructobacillus durionis, Leuconostoc mesenteroides and Lactobacillus plantarum does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step24 hReported[alpindo2018]Ferment the chillies in salt and sugar brine
Temperature80 °CReported[alpindo2018]Season and blanch
Salt2–2.5 %Reported[alpindo2018]Ferment the chillies in salt and sugar brine

What makes this one different

In fermented sambal the chillies sit sealed for a day in a light 2–2.5 % salt and sugar brine before they are ground; the paste is then cooked and sterilised in jars. In sambal tempoyak the chillies are not fermented first; they are steamed and ground with tempoyak, the fermented durian, and then cooked.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Sambal tempoyakMade with tempoyak, durian flesh fermented with or without salt. In a lab recipe red and bird's eye chillies, shallot and garlic were steamed for 2 minutes at 80 °C, ground with tempoyak (47 % of the paste), heated for 30 minutes with stirring and sealed in retort pouches, which were sterilised at 121 °C for 20 or 35 minutes. The lactic bacteria found in tempoyak include Fructobacillus durionis, Leuconostoc mesenteroides and Lactobacillus plantarum.

Safety

The finished sambal in the study was cooked and its jars sterilised for 30 minutes, and its total plate count stayed within the 1 × 10^4 cfu/g limit of the Indonesian national standard (SNI 2012) quoted in the study. In a study of tempoyak, Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes and Staphylococcus aureus were not detected, but cells added to it survived up to 8–12 days. A plate count does not test for botulinum toxin, and the study's abstract lists no pH test for this sambal. Chillies, shallot and garlic are low-acid vegetables, and CDC says pressure canning is the only recommended way to can low-acid foods, so do not copy the 30-minute jar step at home as a way to keep it. A Colorado State extension sheet says home-canned pepper products have been implicated in botulism deaths through untested recipes and under-acidified products. Keep home-made sambal in the refrigerator unless its pH has been measured below 4.6, the line Snyder et al. give for Clostridium botulinum growth.

Hazards the sources name: Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes and Staphylococcus aureus (not found in tempoyak, but survived 8–12 days when added).

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Sambal is a chilli paste with many local forms; fermenting the chillies is one way to keep it and change its taste (Alpindo 2018). Sambal tempoyak is part of Sumatran everyday and festive food, and in 2020 a study at the Sumatra Institute of Technology noted that no commercial sambal tempoyak product yet existed and tested a retort-pouch version (Pangastuti 2020).

Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
  1. [alpindo2018] Alpindo A. 2018, Peningkatan kualitas sambal fermentasi melalui penambahan garam dan bahan penstabil (Improving the quality of fermented sambal by adding salt and a stabiliser), AGRITEPA Jurnal Ilmu dan Teknologi Pertanian 3(2):1–10, doi:10.37676/agritepa.v3i2.529paper
  2. [pangastuti2020] Pangastuti H.A., Permana L., Mareta D.T., Fitriani V., Wahyuningtyas A. 2020, Kajian sifat fisik, kimia, dan sensoris sambal tempoyak (durian terfermentasi) berkemasan retort pouch (Physical, chemical and sensory study of sambal tempoyak in retort pouches), Jurnal Teknologi Pertanian Andalas 24(2):157–165, doi:10.25077/jtpa.24.2.157-165.2020paper
  3. [chuah2016] Chuah L.O., Shamila-Syuhada A.K., Liong M.T., Rosma A., Thong K.L., Rusul G. 2016, Physio-chemical, microbiological properties of tempoyak and molecular characterisation of lactic acid bacteria isolated from tempoyak, Food Microbiology 58:95–104, doi:10.1016/j.fm.2016.04.002 (abstract)paper
  4. [wp-sambal] Wikipedia, Varieties of sambal (outline only; used for where sambal tempoyak is found)wiki
  5. [cdc-prev] CDC, Botulism Prevention, read 2026-11gov
  6. [csu-peppers] Hill M. and Kendall P., Making pickled peppers, Colorado State University Extension fact sheet 9.314, revised 8/12 (copy on a University of California extension site)other
  7. [snyder2020] Snyder A., Breidt F., Andress E.L. and Ingham B.H. 2020, Manufacture of traditionally fermented vegetable products, best practice for small businesses and retail food establishments, Food Protection Trends 40(4), 251–263paper