VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Soto, sroto, sauto or coto are soupy dishes made from meat broth and vegetables. This food is easy to find in various regions in Indonesia with their own distinctive taste. If you go to Karo district, North Sumatra, you can enjoy a unique soto called trites. It is unique because this soup is made from grass which is taken from an undigested cow's stomach. Even though it is from a cow's stomach, this grass is still fresh and suitable for processing. But it is not the grass that will be eaten but the juice from the grass. To make it, the grass will be squeezed and then filtered with cheesecloth, so that the fibers in the grass are not included. Then, the juice will be boiled for up to 3 hours to produce a savory broth.

To get rid of the fishy smell, soto trites uses various spices. One of the main ingredients in making trites is cingkam wood or often also known as gadog tree and cikala acid (kecombrang flower). It also uses andaliman and rimbang, then other spices such as chili, ginger, turmeric, candlenut and lemongrass.Broth from the grass is then cooked with offal, ox bones (buffalo or goat), gravel, tripe and various spices.  Karo people also add milk to trites, so that it tastes savory and makes the broth thick.When presented, trites does not look very attractive. The color of the broth is slightly brown. However, if you try it once, you will be addicted because of its delicious taste and good nutritional content. Trites contains tannins which are effective in healing ulcers and smoothing the digestive system.

In Karo community, trites used to be only served for certain people because not everyone was able to cook it as the basic ingredients were difficult to get and expensive. To cook trites, at least one has to slaughter a cow.Therefore, it is not surprising that trites is said to be the food of the kings. Ordinary people only have the opportunity to taste trites at certain times, for example when the annual work party (after planting season) takes place. This annual work party or 'Merdang merdem' was once commonly held in each village.