Pickling vegetables or fish and serving them as a salad or side dish is what acar is all about in Indonesia and Malaysia. The food can be pickled in a sweet and sour brine for as little as an hour or as long as a week, though some recipes call for the food to be lightly boiled in the brine and served fresh and warm. Cucumbers and carrots are commonly pickled in acar, but other ingredients such as cauliflower, long beans, eggplant, chili peppers, and fish are also popular. Although premade acar is available in Southeast Asian grocery stores, many families prefer to make their own so they can control the amount of vinegar used.
Acars are manufactured in a variety of styles throughout the region. Nyonya is a more complex version that contains a long list of spices and vegetables in a liquid that more closely resembles salad dressing than brine. Cucumbers and carrots are used in the hu or ikan type, but the mixture also contains fried fish. The simplest preparation is ketimun, which consists solely of cucumber slices pickled in a sweet, sour, and spicy brine.
Preparing the vegetables is the first step in making acar. This usually entails salting cucumbers and placing them under a weight until they have lost a significant amount of their water content. Other vegetables, such as cauliflower and carrots, are blanched in boiling water for a few seconds and then dried completely. If fish is used in the dish, it is deep fried before being dried.
After that, oil is heated in a frying pan or wok. In the oil, a paste of spices such as turmeric, chili powder, garlic, ginger, and coriander is placed and cooked until the spices are fragrant. The previously prepared vegetables, along with vinegar, salt, and sugar, are added to the pan and allowed to heat through while the liquid comes together. The entire mixture is taken off the heat and allowed to cool once it has been heated but not overcooked.
To allow the brine to penetrate and flavor the vegetables, most recipes call for pouring the mixture into a container and refrigerating it overnight or longer. Other recipes simply serve the dish as a salad as soon as it’s ready, giving it a sharp flavor. Acar is frequently served as an appetizer or a condiment with roasted or barbecued meats.