Morning in the port city of Makassar begins with a steaming pot. At a food stall, the cook ladles beef and offal from a deep pot into small bowls and pours in the dark brown soup. On the table are wedges of lime, a sweet-and-hot sambal of fermented soybeans, and ketupat, rice cooked in woven palm leaf. Diners tear the ketupat, dip it in the soup, squeeze in lime, and finish a thoroughly spiced bowl so early in the day. This beef soup, born at the southern gateway of Sulawesi island in Indonesia, is Coto Makassar.
From the pots of Gowa's soldiers to a port city's breakfast
The origins of Coto Makassar are said to go back to the Gowa kingdom, which flourished in South Sulawesi in the 16th century. It is said to have begun as food for palace servants and soldiers, stewing beef together with offal such as intestines, liver, lungs, heart, tripe, and brain. What sets it apart from other beef soups around Indonesia is that the broth is thickened with peanut paste.
This one bowl holds the history of the port city of Makassar. There are spices like those of curries from India, peanuts that arrived from overseas, and halal beef in keeping with Islamic teaching. In the fermented soybean paste, taucho, served with the soup, you can see the influence of the food culture of Chinese communities. In the age of the Gowa kingdom, Makassar was a trading city where many people and goods passed through.
Coto Makassar is one of the soups called "soto" found across Indonesia. Today it is a staple breakfast of Makassar and is also served at weddings and religious celebrations.
The way of eating it is also Makassar's own. Rather than plain rice, it is usually eaten with ketupat, rice packed into a bag woven from young palm leaves and boiled, or with burasa, rice cooked in coconut milk and wrapped in banana leaf. Alongside, you put lime and a taucho sambal and adjust the taste to your liking as you eat.
What to know when you cook it at home
The method here is based on a recipe from The Indonesian Table, a cookbook by the Indonesian food authority Petty Pandean-Elliott. It is a home version that leaves out offal and uses beef cheeks, which fall apart in the mouth after a long simmer. If you cannot find beef cheeks, beef shank works too. If you want offal, add parboiled honeycomb tripe or omasum in place of some of the meat.
The source recipe uses miso for depth in the soup. What goes with the soup in Makassar is taucho, the Indonesian fermented soybean paste. If you can get it at an Asian grocery or online, do try taucho. Its soft saltiness, with the beans still whole, goes well with a peanut soup. If you cannot, a blended miso is perfectly good.
Use raw, skinless peanuts and grind them to a fine powder in a food processor or spice grinder. Roasted peanuts make the flavor too toasty, and salted ones make the soup too salty, so avoid them.
Galangal, lemongrass, and kaffir lime leaves are all available at Asian grocery stores, frozen or dried, sold for Thai cooking. If you use dried kaffir lime leaves, double the number of leaves, as their aroma is weaker than fresh.
Ingredients (serves 4)
The soup uses peanuts and soy (taucho, miso). Peanuts can cause severe allergic reactions, so always check with everyone who will eat it. The peanut powder sinks to the bottom and scorches easily, so after adding it, stir from the bottom of the pot every so often.
How to make Coto Makassar
The simmer takes 2 hours, but you are working with your hands for only the first 20 minutes or so. The hour while the beef softens is plenty of time to prepare the peanuts.
Grinding the spices after dry-toasting makes the aroma far stronger. Scorching them brings out bitterness, so as soon as the coriander seeds turn golden and start to crackle and pop slightly, take the pan off the heat.
Cook the beef all the way through. Two hours of simmering is normally enough, but if you add offal, always parboil raw offal first and cook it thoroughly in the soup as well.
Dip the ketupat, squeeze the lime
In Makassar, Coto Makassar comes in a small bowl. Because the soup is rich, the right way to eat it is not to drink a big portion in one go but to dip in ketupat or rice bit by bit. A squeeze of lime tightens the flavor considerably, so try squeezing it in when you are halfway through.
If you want more heat, put sambal alongside. Among other Indonesian soups, Jakarta's soto Betawi (in Japanese) is finished white with milk or coconut milk, and East Java's rawon (in Japanese) is finished jet black with keluak nuts. Even among beef soups alone, the color changes this much from island to island, which is part of what makes Indonesian cooking fun.
Ketupat is a block of rice packed into a diamond-shaped bag woven from young palm leaves and boiled for a long time. In Indonesia it is also known as a food for celebrations at the end of the fasting month. Small balls of cooked rice mixed with glutinous rice also go well dipped in the soup.
Ways to vary it
To include offal as a Makassar stall does, replace about one third of the beef cheeks with parboiled honeycomb tripe, omasum, or beef heart. Add the offal with the beef in step 3 and simmer for the same time. Cuts with different textures bring variety to a single bowl and move it closer to the stall's taste.
You can also make it with beef tendon in place of the cheeks. In that case, parboil the tendon once to remove the scum before using it, and extend the simmer by about 30 minutes. The longer it simmers, the more gelatin dissolves into the soup and the thicker it gets.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, taucho or miso?
Taucho is closer to the taste of Makassar. The beans stay whole, and the saltiness has a touch of sweetness. Miso has no whole beans and a stronger richness, but the source recipe uses miso too, so either makes a good soup.
Can I make it ahead?
Once the heat has dropped, put it in a storage container, refrigerate it, and finish it within 2 days. It sets from the peanut thickening when cold, so add a little water and reheat over low heat.
Can I make it in a pressure cooker?
Yes. After adding the water in step 4, cover and cook under pressure for 15–20 minutes, then let the pressure release naturally. Open the lid, add the peanut powder, and simmer about 15 minutes to thicken.
Is it spicy?
With just one red chili it is only mildly peppery. The spice aroma is strong, but the heat is restrained. If you like it hot, add sambal at the table.
Sources
- Kavey Eats, "Indonesian Makassar Beef Coto (Coto Makassar)." Recipe from Petty Pandean-Elliott, The Indonesian Table (Phaidon Press). Accessed and checked: 22 October 2026. https://kaveyeats.com/indonesian-makassar-beef-coto
- Wikipedia, "Coto makassar." Accessed and checked: 22 October 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coto_makassar
