Saoto

Saoto is a clear chicken broth soup seasoned with ginger, garlic, shallot, salam leaf and allspice. It is served in a bowl over rice with shredded chicken, bean sprouts, hard‑boiled egg, fried rice vermicelli, fried shallot and thin stick fries. On the side come a sweet soy sauce with chili and sambal.

Saoto comes from soto, the chicken soup of Java in Indonesia. The first contracted Javanese workers arrived in Suriname on August 9, 1890, and were taken to the Mariënburg plantation in Commewijne. Until 1939 about 33,000 arrived. On the plantations they remade the soup with ingredients available in the country, and the recipe changed until it became saoto.

The base remains similar to soto: chicken broth with lemongrass, onion or shallot and garlic. The difference is in the seasonings and how it’s served. There are soto versions with turmeric, kaffir lime leaf, vermicelli or rice dumpling. In the Surinamese version described here you find salam leaf and allspice, rice, fried vermicelli and stick fries.

Today saoto is eaten across Suriname. In Paramaribo, the Blauwgrond neighborhood, which began as a Javanese village north of the city, is known for its warungs, small Javanese restaurants often set up on the veranda or in an annex of the house, where saoto appears alongside nasi, bami and satay.