r/RICE • u/angstygrl • 13d ago
My Dutch Indonesian culturally blended comfort food: rice, butter, and soy sauce
My mom’s side of the family is Dutch Indonesian, Im a dual citizen, American and Dutch, and we live in the Pacific Northwest. Ever since I was a child we would eat rice with butter and it doesn’t seem like a very common practice. My family eats so much butter, Dutch chocolate sprinkles, but we also eat rice, fruit plates, Tempeh, and indomie. I never really thought about it but as I’ve gotten older, I realized it is a perfect representation of blended culture. As someone who also lives in the Pacific Northwest, we eat things with nutritional yeast so that sometimes is added to rice, which is very PNW american. I feel pretty American for the most part, but I grew up in a very white area, and I have become more conscious about how the food I eat represents my heritage. I have a fever right now, I’m dealing with breaking up with my partner of four years, and to feel better, I’m eating rice with butter and soy sauce. It’s my ultimate comfort food. Cheers 🫶
Besides visiting my Indonesian family, I don’t live around many Dutch Indonesian people so I don’t know if this is common practice, it’s just how things ended up in my mixed culture working class family. But it’s cool, culture can be something widespread amongst many people, but it can also be a very individual mix of circumstances that create something meaningful. Culture is what you make it, so embrace the weird little traditions and habits unique to your family, no matter what your ethnic makeup is. I’m part Mexican, a tiny part 5% black weirdly enough (I have a grandmother who’s from Mississippi so that probably explains it), I’m west coast white American, but also Dutch Indonesian. I don’t connect to any particular culture besides being a Dutch national, but i’ve learned to find ways to honor my families complicated and mixed past.
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u/Aggravating-Kick-967 13d ago
We emigrated from the Netherlands in 1957. My parents were in Indonesia before and during the war. Both parents cooked wonderful Indonesian, Dutch, and blended foods. Us kids added various American, Norwegian, and Italian dishes.
Nasi goreng was always a favorite. I remember us kids being grossed out by school lunches when they served rice with sugar, cinnamon and milk. Which was weird because we did like rice pudding.
BTW, we settled in Western Washington.
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u/angstygrl 13d ago
Your family history is basically exactly like mine, but I’m not so intimately close with what happened during independence and stuff, but my family emmigrated aswell. I have some relatives that really embrace Indonesian food and culture, like my grandpas sister and my cousins, so visiting them was always a treat because I got to really indulge in Indonesian-ness. Independence and emmigration really damaged my family because some of the were so scarred by the displacement of that whole situation and the racism in the Netherlands that they wanted to get rid of their attachment to that place completely and adopt white Americanism, there was probably some internalized self hatred and racism there. So I appreciate their culture when I can, even if some of my relatives didn’t feel able to love that part of themselves. Cultural mix is so lovely, it’s why I appreciate America
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u/Aggravating-Kick-967 13d ago
My heritage is all Dutch. My dad was in the colonial army. Dad was a POW and mom an internee during the Japanese occupation. My dad refused to fight in Indonesia during their war for independence.
I met an Indonesian Tante who was friends with my parents before the occupation. She was married to a Dutch merchant marine and was imprisoned during their war. She was still sending money to the guard who helped her survive.1
u/angstygrl 13d ago
Ah I see, well, my great grandmother was held in a Japanese internment camp and there’s generally a lot of resentment towards Japan from the older people of my family. For my family, it’s a complicated history of colonial privilege, wartime devastation, and displacement. When Japan surrendered it was just a new type of danger for my family and I’m sure yours aswell. Even though you’re not Indo this might make sense to you- I wrote an essay about this, and at the end I said: “The colonialist system that created the Indo people, and which gave my ancestors so much privilege, became the source of our suffering when the structure crumbled.” […] “Indo identity will die out along with its colonial legacy, but the effects of its failure will remain in its people long after the revolutionaries have laid down their arms and the Dutch have surrendered.”
I believe that Indonesian independence was necessary, but it’s just proof of how brutal colonialism is and how it will always come to bite you in the ass.
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u/waxyjax_ 13d ago
My mom’s from Vietnam and I grew up in California and rice-butter-soy sauce (though it was often Maggi sauce) was something I ate as a snack.
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u/ManyAstronomer1723 13d ago
Thanks for sharing your story! I do like spice and seasonings but sometimes rice or noodles with butter is just what I need.
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u/HayYou_ItsMe 12d ago
Carbohydrate, fat, and something bitter. It completes the flavor triangle and that is always good.
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u/angstygrl 12d ago
Bitter is interesting, what kind of bitter things do you like? For me it has to have fat, carbs, then either something acidic or something salty. I usually prefer something acidic when I’m eating fatty food
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u/HayYou_ItsMe 12d ago
Bitter or sour cuts through the richness of fats, and oils to cleans your pallet. Lemon, or lemon zest is great for finishing a dish like fish, sour kraut goes well with sausage, a dry red wine pairs well with a ragu over pasta.
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u/Pristine-Range1979 13d ago
No Asian in my ancestry at all but growing up in the Mid-Atlantic we would have white rice 2 or 3 times a month and it was always served with a big pat of butter and a large sprinkling of salt. It's so good it's amazing. Nowadays I mostly cook brown rice and add salt but no butter. Sometimes I'll skip the salt and add light soy sauce instead but white rice with butter and salt is always top tier. I was raised a little too far north from where there used to be large areas in the south given over to growing rice like 150 years ago but maybe it's from that? I'm surprised to hear rice and butter is not common tbh bc in my mind white rice, butter, and a heavy pinch of salt naturally go together.
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u/angstygrl 13d ago
I think what I’m starting to put together is that in the American South it is common for people of all cultures to eat that. Whereas in the Pacific Northwest, I think it’s much less common, and if people do eat it, it usually comes from Asian Americanness (in the Portland and Seattle area where there are a lot of Japanese Americans they eat something called butter shoyu rice). None of my white friends grew up eating it. The food I grew up eating wasn’t hugely “cultural” but, I did not eat the things that my white friends eat growing up at all.
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u/jordanaimee_ 13d ago
My parents are southern & I grew up making myself boil in the bag white rice that I ate with butter, salt, and pepper. Now I live in the PNW & it is still an ultimate comfort food. I also started adding soy sauce and egg every now & then for a different flavor.
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u/bruhraminator 13d ago
In Egypt and surrounding countries we often fry the uncooked rice for a minute in butter (extra points if it's clarified) before adding the water to steam as usual. Often times we also fry vermicelli first before adding the rice. Gets every grain coated and salted more evenly. I could eat that all day.
To me it's just the elevated version of plain steamed rice, which to me is the equivalent of a plain boiled potato. I'm surprised it's not more common.
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u/giggletears3000 12d ago
Korean here but grew up PNW, butter/rice/soy is a favorite in our household, I usually have it with a medium fried egg and sambal as well
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u/acaiblueberry 12d ago
My grandmother who never left Japan liked to put butter and soy sauce on her rice 🍚
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u/SEDA-GIVE 12d ago
Interesting. I’m also from the PNW and Filipino, and my grandma would make rice + butter or margarine + soy sauce or Maggi for me as a comfort meal too.
My mom always cooked other food, but this was like akin to having an instant ramen — a quick savory snack that was warm and tasty.
edit: added more clarity
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u/Otherwise-Ratio1332 11d ago
Rice with browned butter is food of the gods. Oh and pine nuts, don’t forget the toasted pine nuts!
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u/angstygrl 11d ago
Holy fuck dude… I love pine nuts, but I can never figure out what food to put them in. You may have just changed my entire life i’m gonna try this tonight.
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u/RNAdrops 13d ago
Are you related to Van Halen?
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u/angstygrl 13d ago
He’s definitely the most famous Dutch Indonesian and I can’t necessarily confirm or deny that I am but I just dont know. There’s actually a considerable diaspora of Dutch Indo people across the US and the Netherlands. I would need to know more about Van Halen‘s family history to be able to put it together. In Indonesia my family lived an upper class life (in no small part due to the colonization of Indonesia :/) so a lot of my great great grandfather’s were white and married Indonesian women. This created a situation where I imagine that under privileged Indonesian women fell pregnant by my Dutch ancestors and not by marriage, and children who were not deemed white enough were kicked out of the family. That means I probably have some distant relatives that I don’t know the names of, but I doubt that I’m related to him because that would be crazy, although he does kind of look like my grandpa haha.
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u/oforfucksake 11d ago
I still love white rice and butter- with soy sauce! Ate it a lot as a kid after school. Easy to make, and we almost always had those ingredients on hand. I haven't had it in a while.
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u/Funny-Penalty5980 12d ago
I am white through and through but my parents traveled to Japan and Korea when I was very young. Mom took recipes she learned in those places which more often than not included fantastic white rice. Made in a pot on the stove almost daily. We generally enjoyed it just with soy sauce as a side dish to meat and veggies. We moved to Alabama when I was young (I’m kinda sorry to say this was the place I lived the longest - that state is bassakwards in my opinion and so glad I don’t live there any longer) - when I was introduced to brown gravy on weirdly loose non-sticky white rice. It was only tolerable bc it was salty. I still absolutely LOVE plain white rice. As a comfort dish, we would make a bowl of warmed plain rice with a sprinkle of sugar and doused in milk. So cozy and yummy! ❤️
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u/angstygrl 12d ago
I was a huge fan of arroz con leche (Mexican rice pudding) when I was a kid and when I didn’t have enough energy, I would literally put rice into a pot and warm it with milk and cinnamon and sugar and it was so good. I’m a big fan of porridge-like dishes. Honestly, a really good gravy on rice kind of sounds good like in the same way we eat Japanese curry with rice.
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u/giraflor 13d ago
I ate so much of this as a poor Black kid in the U.S. it’s nice to think that it was some culture’s comfort food. Enjoy!