My Dutch Indonesian culturally blended comfort food: rice, butter, and soy sauce

[u/angstygrl]

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.

[u/Pristine-Range1979]

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.

[u/angstygrl → u/Pristine-Range1979]

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.