A couple of months ago, a very good friend of mine, mbak Rizky, shared with me some tips for cooking rendang. She told me to cook it using a slow cooker. I honestly thought that would be too good to be true, because what do you mean all I have to do is to throw then mix everything up , give it a good stir for a moment, then call it a day? I grew up believing that rendang is one of the most labor-consuming dish, alongside with peeling a kilogram of shallots, so when mbak Rizky told me with such conviction that yes it’s doable to cook rendang in a slow cooker without worrying about split coconut milk, I got intrigued.

I have a pack of instant rendang seasoning in my pantry, so I decided to mix them up with 1 kilogram of beef (topside and cubed 1.5 inches) and 800 mL coconut milk in a slow cooker then set it for 8 hours/overnight.

Just now, after breakfast, I opened the slow cooker lid and yes, the rendang looked great. Then, I stirred them. However, I found it difficult to stir them in the slow cooker using the Sautée/Stir option since I couldn’t control the heat. I then moved them to a big wok so I could continue stirring while adjusting the heat.

This is where I made the rookie mistake. On the rendang seasoning package, it only mentioned the steps of mixing together the seasoning, meat, and coconut milk. I noticed this a LOT on prepackaged seasonings from Padang. For some reasons, all the uni-uni Padang, with such mad skills and god-tier expertise in cooking, thought that everyone would just know how to cook rendang 🥲 I’M SO SORRY, UNI, I’M BORN AND BRED JAWA. I didn’t realized that it needed oil to heat and put everything together, so I spent 10-15 minutes stirring the half-done rendang while wondering if I missed anything. Once I realized that I needed to add oil, which I immediately added a dash of oil to the rendang, the rendang cooked quite fast and looking great!

Had I realized that a bit of oil is needed, the rendang would definitely cooked faster, hahah!

Also, thanks to the slow cooker, the meat retained its shape nicely. Thank you, mbak Rizky, for the tips! I feel more confident now in cooking rendang!