Arem-arem is an Indonesian- Javanese snack made of compressed

rice cake A rice cake may be any kind of food item made from rice that has been shaped, condensed, or otherwise combined into a single object. A wide variety of rice cakes exist in many different cultures in which rice is eaten and are particularly preval ...

in the form of a

cylinder A cylinder (from ) has traditionally been a three-dimensional solid, one of the most basic of curvilinear geometric shapes. In elementary geometry, it is considered a prism with a circle as its base. A cylinder may also be defined as an ...

wrapped inside a

banana leaf The banana leaf is the leaf of the banana plant, which may produce up to 40 leaves in a growing cycle. The leaves have a wide range of applications because they are large, flexible, waterproof and decorative. They are used for cooking, wrappin ...

, filled with diced vegetables, ''

tempeh Tempeh or tempe (; jv, ꦠꦺꦩ꧀ꦥꦺ, témpé, ) is a traditional Indonesian food made from fermented soybeans. It is made by a natural culturing and controlled fermentation process that binds soybeans into a cake form. A fungus, '' Rhizo ...

'' or ''

oncom Oncom ( Aksara Sunda: ; IPA: ) is one of the traditional staple foods of West Java ( Sundanese) cuisine of Indonesia. There are two kinds of oncom: red oncom and black oncom. Oncom is closely related to tempeh; both are foods fermented using mol ...

'', sometimes also filled with minced meat or ''abon'' (

beef floss ''Rousong'' or ''yuk sung or bak hu'' ( ; ), also known as meat floss, is a dried meat product with a light and fluffy texture similar to coarse cotton, originating from China. ''Rousong'' is used as a topping for many foods, such as congee, t ...

), and eaten as snack. Arem-arem is often described as a smaller size ''

lontong Lontong is an Indonesian dish made of compressed rice cake in the form of a cylinder wrapped inside a banana leaf, commonly found in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Rice is rolled inside a banana leaf and boiled, then cut into small cakes as ...

'' snack with fillings, thus sometimes also called ''lontong isi'' (lit. "filled lontong"). It is a common snack in

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

, and commonly found in

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Gui ...

n marketplaces as ''jajan pasar'' ("market munchies") as a type of '' kue'' (snack) offered there. Arem-arem is often served as traditional ceremony, family gathering, birthday, office meetings, and often presented in a snack box. It is quite similar to '' lemper'', but use regular rice instead of

sticky rice Glutinous rice (''Oryza sativa var. glutinosa''; also called sticky rice, sweet rice or waxy rice) is a type of rice grown mainly in Southeast and East Asia, and the northeastern regions of South Asia, which has opaque grains, very low amylose ...

''lemper''.

Variants and fillings

The rice is cooked with

coconut milk Coconut milk is an opaque, milky-white liquid extracted from the grated pulp of mature coconuts. The opacity and rich taste of coconut milk are due to its high oil content, most of which is saturated fat. Coconut milk is a traditional food ...

, and stuffed with diced vegetables (

carrot The carrot ('' Daucus carota'' subsp. ''sativus'') is a root vegetable, typically orange in color, though purple, black, red, white, and yellow cultivars exist, all of which are domesticated forms of the wild carrot, ''Daucus carota'', na ...

common bean ''Phaseolus vulgaris'', the common bean, is a herbaceous annual plant grown worldwide for its edible dry seeds or green, unripe pods. Its leaf is also occasionally used as a vegetable and the straw as fodder. Its botanical classification, alo ...

and

potato The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Wild potato species can be found from the southern Uni ...

), cooked minced meat (beef or chicken), ''abon'' (beef floss), or tofu, ''

'' and ''

''. There is a lot of ''arem-arem'' variants, mostly differ according to its fillings, the availability of ingredients, and also creativity of the creator. ''Arem-arem'' is usually uses thin young banana leaf as wrapper, a thin light yellow-green colored banana leaf. ''Lontong'' on the other hand, usually uses thicker mature banana leaf. The texture of ''arem-arem'' snack is usually softer compared to those of common ''lontong'' or sticky ''lemper'', due to thinner banana leaf, addition of coconut milk and prolonged steaming or boiling period.

References

External links

15 variations of Arem-arem recipes
(In Indonesian) {{Indonesian cuisine Javanese cuisine Indonesian snack foods Indonesian rice dishes

Variants and fillings

See also

References

External links