Vegan Ayam Gepuk

This is a plant based take on the viral indonesian smashed fried chicken dish, served with fresh and cashew sambal along with tofu, tempeh and fried cabbage.

I’ve been seeing people try Ayam Gepuk at almost every Malaysian or Indonesian restaurant and it’s for a good reason – I mean smashed fried chicken with a fiery sambal?! Give me 14 of them right now.

This chicken is typically marinated in spices, deep-fried until crispy, and then gently smashed (fun fact: gepuk means to smash or pound). In this version, we’ll be using oyster mushroom clusters but we won’t need to smashed them as they already soak up all the flavour when marinating and being fried.

Unlike your regular sambal, sambal for ayam gepuk combines raw red chilies, garlic, and hot oil with a little bit of salt. It’s also served with a cashew based sambal which is creamy, nutty and definitely much needed to balance the heat!

I love that these dishes are also always served with fried tofu and tempeh. We also pair this with fried cabbage though in this recipe, we will be air frying it rather than deep frying cabbage. Deep frying cabbage just seems a little redundant since every other topping is deep fried in this dish.

There are probably just one or two spots serving vegan indonesian cuisine so it was time to take matters into my own hands – make vegan ayam gepuk at home with the same deliciousness!

Ingredients You Need

• oyster mushroom clusters – these work best for the recipe as a fried ‘chicken’ substitute
• ginger and galangal – for the depth of flavours
• fresh red onion and garlic
• spices – curry powder, turmeric, mushroom seasoning
• binders – corn starch, plain flour
• sambal
  • red chilies (you can use a mix of bird’s eye chilies if you can take extreme heat), garlic, salt, coconut sugar
  • cashews
• sides
  • extra firm tofu
  • tempeh
  • cabbage
  • kecap manis

Allium free substitutions: Avoid making the chili sambal. For the marinade, you can omit onion and garlic – instead substitute with a pinch of hing.

Gluten free substitutions: Substitute plain flour with gluten free flour. Avoid kecap manis.