Soto Ayam (Indonesian-Style Chicken Noodle Soup) (2024)

Soto Ayam is an Indonesian chicken noodle soup made with a bright, citrusy, and gingery broth as its base.

Soto Ayam begins with a broth of turmeric, lemon grass, ginger, onions, and garlic in which you poach a whole chicken along with aromatics such as coriander, cumin, and pepper.

Once you've poached the chicken, you slice it into bite-sized pieces and serve it with the amazing broth along with rice noodles, a hard or soft-boiled egg, and lots of garnishes, such as bean sprouts, celery leaves, napa cabbage, cilantro, and chiles.

The unique chicken, turmeric, and citrus-y broth is so refreshing, and the combination of the broth, chicken, and noodles is pure comfort food.

Ingredients in Soto Ayam:

For the broth, you will need a whole chicken, sweet onions, a head of garlic, ginger, a lemon grass stalk, and celery.

For the aromatics, you will also need coriander seeds, black peppercorns, and turmeric.

Additional ingredients include sugar, lime juice, and fish sauce.

A specialty ingredient, if you can find it, is makrut lime leaves. They are sold either fresh or frozen, typically in Asian grocery stores. I couldn't find them, so I substituted lime zest and halved limes in the broth.

You will also need rice noodles (vermicelli). You can either use the dried version or fresh vermicelli. I found a package of fresh noodles in my local Viet grocery store. They still require boiling, but only for 10 seconds!

These noodles are great for making pho too.

To garnish the soup, you will need some greens, bean sprouts, chiles, and a hard or medium boiled egg. I served this soup with some chopped napa cabbage, scallions, celery leaves, Thai chiles, and cilantro leaves.

You can also serve a few lime wedges to add even more citrus-y flavor.

To Make the Soup:

First, place a whole chicken in an 8 quart pot and cover it with water. Bring it to a boil and boil the chicken for just six minutes. Remove the chicken from the pot, dump out the water, and then clean the pot.

Place the chicken back into the pot and cover it again with water. Add the onions, garlic, ginger, salt, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, black peppercorns, lime zest and halves, lemongrass stalk, celery stalk, fish sauce, sugar, and turmeric.

You'll end up with a very yellow chicken from all of the turmeric!

What's interesting is that the chicken meat itself doesn't become yellow. Just the skin, which you peel of when you chop the chiken meat.

While letting the chicken cool enough to chop, simmer the broth for an additional 20 minutes and then strain it and add more lime juice.

To Serve the Soup:

Pour the broth into the bowl and garnish with your favorite garnishes such as celery leaves, cilantro, napa cabbage, fried onions, and Thai chiles.

You can also add some condiments such as sambal oelek (a chili paste) and ketjap manis (an Indonesian sweet soy sauce, which I adore. Sweeter than traditional soy sauce, but not overly sweet).

You can also add some fried onions or shallots.

Make-Ahead:

You can make the broth and chicken in advance and store them separately in the refrigerator. When you are ready to serve the soup, prepare the noodles, reheat the broth, and serve everything for self-assembly, giving everyone to add whatever condiments and additions they want.

More Noodle Soups you May Enjoy:

Turkey Noodle Soup

Five Spice Turkey Noodle Soup

Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup

Shrimp and Pork Meatball Noodle Soup

More Indonesian Recipes from the Sunday Funday group:

• Beef Rendang fromA Day in the Life on the Farm
• Iga Bakar (Indonesian BBQ Beef Short Ribs) fromPalatable Pastime
• Nasi Goreng with Chicken fromAmy’s Cooking Adventures
• Rijsttafel, An Indonesian Feast with a Colonial Twist fromCulinary Cam
• Soto Ayam (Indonesian Chicken Soup) fromKaren’s Kitchen Stories

Recipe adapted mostly from Dutch Feast by Emily Wight. It's a wonderful cookbook with a section devoted to Indonesian inspired recipes.