Dutch-Surinamese Broodje Moksi Meti

Broodje is a word in Dutch meaning bread, or bread roll, or more specifically a sandwich made in a bread roll–the German equivalent would be brötchen. Our first Dutch broodje at the Tribunal was Broodje Kroket way back in the early days, though more recently we’ve also tackled Broodje Haring and Broodje Hete Kip. The latter in particular was based on a dish popular in Paramaribo, capital and largest city in Suriname, a former Dutch colony on the north coast of South America. Today we’re looking into another Dutch sandwich, Broodje Moksi Meti, that is also derived from Surinamese cuisine.

As with many “New World” colonies, the demographics of Suriname are a melting pot of ethnicities–South Asian, Indonesian, African, Chinese, and native American, many multi-racial people and a very small minority of white descendants of Dutch colonists. Surinamese cuisine is, as a result, also a melting pot, mixing local ingredients with African, East Asian, South Asian, and Southeast Asian influences. Surinamese restaurants are popular in Amsterdam–from simple takeouts to fancier sit-down restaurants, selling Broodjes like this, or Indonesian-derived noodle and rice dishes, or Indian-descended curries and roti.

The previous broodje, Hete Kip (“hot chicken”), was based on a spicy Indonesian-derived chicken dish and served in a hard roll, either long or round, with cucumbers. (I added crispy fried onions as a little flourish and they were great) The current broodje, Moksi Meti (literally “mixed meats”) appears to be a way to use up leftovers, though the dish it’s based on . The base dish is often served with stir-fried noodles or rice, and consists of multiple types of sweet, Chinese-inspired meats–some examples include the east Asian barbecue known in many cultures as char siu, or fa chong, a type of sweet pork sausage.

The dish may include roasted chicken or beef or duck–it will feature at least 2 different kinds of meats which are marinated and cooked separately, but will most likely include some commonalities

• Sweet flavor from kecap manis (sweet Indonesian soy sauce)
• 5 spice powder
• garlic and possibly ginger
• a red tint from food coloring.

This YouTube video features recipe prep for a 4-meat moksi meti: char siu pork shoulder, sweet Fachong pork sausage, a 5-spice roasted chicken, and crisp pork belly.

I followed these recipes very closely–though I used chicken breasts instead of thighs–and here were my results:

This made… a lot of meat. On the first night, we served it with some fried rice and between Mindy, Ian, and I we managed to make a dent in it.

To prepare the sandwiches, though, I combined all 4 meats, chopping them into somewhat more consistent bite-sized pieces and stir-frying them together in a pan with some of the leftover char siu glaze, some additional store-bought Chinese barbecue sauce–and a few more drops of red food coloring, adding a handful of chopped scallions in at the end.

Chopping the meats up this way and combining them in the same sauce does lose some of the individual character of each meat, but it makes each bite an interesting combination of flavors and textures. The overall impression is sweet, yes, very much like char siu, with honey, sugar, garlic, ginger, and five spice powder leading the way, but the individual textures–the crisp fattiness of pork belly, the lean strands of chicken breast, the snappy sausage casing alternating with the softly parting minced meat of the sausages themselves–and the chewy, deeply marinated, sweet meat of the char siu pork shoulder itself. The scallions make things look pretty but don’t add a whole lot–if this were being served over rice, you’d probably want to stir-fry some cabbage and onions into it.

But this sandwich will have vegetables of its own. Rather than use plain sliced cucumbers this time though, I opted to make this sweet-and-sour Surinamese refrigerator pickle recipe. I used slightly less sugar and slightly more salt and vinegar, because I like my pickles a little less sweet, and they turned out almost perfect for me.

To build the sandwich, I split open an oval-shaped hard roll–these were “Club rolls” from the bakery at Mariano’s, a Chicago-area chain of grocery stores, a nicely crusty, slightly chewy roll with some similarities to an elongated version of the Dutch Pistolet roll that might be used for a Broodje. I used three large slices of the sweet/sour cucumber pickles for each sandwich, along with a good-sized scoop of the slightly saucy meat mixture, and I topped the meats with some of the onions that were pickled along with the sweet-and-sour cucumbers.

And you may not believe me, but I got serious bánh mì vibes from this sandwich. The bread, though I like it a lot, was certainly not as good. But the vaguely Asian savory/sweet mixture of meats along with the slightly sweet pickles at least led in that direction. A good quality demibaguette might have helped. Some cilantro and a few hot peppers would have sealed the deal. This is a good, a really good sandwich.

It’s a lot of effort for a sandwich, sure. And the simplicity of the result may not be worth the complexity of the effort involved in bringing it about. But if I ever find myself in Amsterdam and in need of a sandwich, I certainly wouldn’t turn my nose up at a mixed meat Broodje from a Surinamese takeout joint. It’s just the kind of thing I like, and the type of sandwich we hoped to discover when we started this project 10 years ago.

There are 3 new sandwiches coming next month, and I hope there’s at least one that I like as much as I liked Broodje Moksi Meti. (I’ve peeked ahead, and I can almost guarantee it!) I hope you’ll continue to read along, and please let me know if you have any additional insight into these sandwiches, or new sandwiches for us to add to our list. See you then!