INDONESIA: Soto and National Identity. Don’t Call Me Sop!

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In Indonesia, you’ll find two groups of soup dishes – soto and sop. There’s actually a third called sayur, but it’s considered more of a stew than a soup so we won’t get into it here.

Throughout Indonesia you’ll find many different variants of soto and sop dishes, with a clear distinction made between the two. They looked the same to an outsider like me but some soup-like dishes were clearly labeled “soto” and others “sop”. Why is that? And why the need to make that distinction between soups?

You’d think it has something to do with ingredients or dialect but the answer seems to go deeper than that. It may have something to do with national identity.

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Soto

Soto is a traditional…

Categories:   Will Fly for Food

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