Selat solo (Javanese for: "Solo salad") is a Javanese dish influenced by Western cuisine; it is a specialty of Solo city, Central Java, Indonesia. It consists of braised beef tenderloin served in thin watery sauce made from a mixture of garlic, vinegar, kecap manis (sweet soy sauce), Worcestershire sauce, water, and spiced with nutmeg and black pepper. It is served with hard boiled egg and vegetables such as string beans, potato, tomato, lettuce, cucumber, cauliflower or broccoli and carrot, and topped with potato chips and some dash of mustard or mayonnaise on the side.
Despite its Javanese name — Selat Solo — that denote "salad", its centerpiece is the chunk of beef (preferably tenderloin) that makes this dish hardly a salad, it is more likely to be categorized as a type of braised beef steak in Javanese mildly sweet watery sauce. Some might describe this dish as the cross-over between beefsteak, salad and soup. This dish sometimes also called as Bistik Jawa (Javanese beefsteak), although Javanese beefsteak could refer to another similar dish with less watery sauce.
It hails from Solo in Central Java, hence the name. The dish is made with a combination of beef tenderloin, onions, soy sauce, salt, pepper, sugar, vinegar, shallots, cloves, nutmeg, hard-boiled eggs, mayonnaise, and vegetables such as carrots, lettuce, potatoes, and green beans.
The vegetables and eggs are layered in plate, the meat is then placed over them, and the watery soup is poured over the meat. The dish is traditionally served with a bit of mayonnaise on the side and can be categorized as a main meat dish, a salad, and a soup.
Solomon Gundy
