A Tausug grilled-skewer dish from Sulu and Zamboanga: marinated beef or chicken threaded onto bamboo sticks, charred over coals, then served swimming in a thick, sweet-and-spicy sauce alongside little woven rice cakes called ta'mu. Vendors who specialize in it serve it from dawn, and in Zamboanga satti is most often eaten as breakfast.
Satti belongs to the Tausug people of the Sulu Archipelago, whose maritime trade ties across the Sulu Sea connect their cooking to the wider Malay world; the name traces back to the Malay sate (satay), the family of grilled, skewered meats found from Indonesia to Thailand. Tausug migration carried the dish to Zamboanga City, where it became a fixture of the Chavacano-speaking port's breakfast culture. It is halal, like the rest of the Muslim-Mindanao table.
The skewers come off the coals smoky and lightly charred at the edges, the meat still juicy inside. The sauce is the heart of it — thick, brick-red, sweet up front from coconut and palm sugar, then a peppery curry heat that lingers. Dunk a rice cake in, let it soak, and eat the two together.
The sauce is built like a thin curry: aromatics and dried chilies are toasted and ground, then simmered with coconut milk and a little peanut and shrimp paste until it thickens. Toasting the spices first drives off raw harshness and develops the warm, roasted notes through Maillard browning, while the coconut milk's fat carries the fat-soluble chili and turmeric color and rounds the heat into something mellow rather than sharp.
Variations
Beef is the classic in Sulu, but chicken, and sometimes liver or gizzard, are common; Zamboanga versions tend sweeter and curry-forward, while Tawi-Tawi cooks keep the sauce hotter. The ta'mu may be swapped for plain steamed rice when the woven cakes aren't on hand.
On the Palate
Where Satti sits in the Filipino flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 4
How it's made
7 steps · 40 min
- 110 min
Cut beef or chicken into bite-size pieces and marinate with soy sauce, garlic, ginger and a little turmeric for at least two hours.
- 28 min
Thread the meat tightly onto soaked bamboo skewers.
- 310 min
For the sauce, toast the dried chilies, garlic, ginger and curry powder in oil until fragrant, then grind to a paste.
Watch outToast the dried chilies and spices in oil until fragrant before grinding — this drives off the raw harshness and builds the warm roasted depth; scorch them and it turns bitter.
- 420 min
Simmer the paste with coconut milk, a spoonful of peanut and a little shrimp paste, sweetening with palm sugar, until thick and brick-red.
Watch outSimmer the paste with coconut milk until thick and brick-red — the fat carries the chili and turmeric color and mellows the heat into something round.
- 515 min
Grill the skewers over hot coals, turning and basting, until charred at the edges and cooked through.
- 68 min
Warm the woven rice cakes (ta'mu) or steam plain rice.
- 75 min
Pile the skewers in a bowl, ladle the hot sauce generously over them, and serve the rice alongside.
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