Lontong is an Indonesian dish made of compressed rice cake in the form of a cylinder wrapped inside a banana leaf,[1][2] commonly found in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.

Lontong is often served with Gulai sauce and vegetables, chayote, tempeh, tofu, tauco, boiled egg, sambal, and krupuk crackers.

[5][6] Lontong is traditionally made by boiling the rice until it is partially cooked and packing it tightly into a rolled-up banana leaf.

Outer parts of lontong usually have a greenish color because of the chlorophyll left by the banana leaf rubbing off on the rice cake surface.

However, nasi himpit is now usually speedily produced in water-permeable plastic sachets filled with rice and boiled in water.

It can be served with almost any traditional dish recipe as a staple food, but often is eaten with peanut sauce or coconut milk-based soup.

East Javanese lontong and tofu recipes are known for their distinctive flavour, acquired from a generous amount of petis (a type of shrimp paste).

[8] The more elaborate recipe of lontong is lontong cap go meh, a Peranakan Chinese Indonesian adaptation of traditional Indonesian dishes, lontong served with rich opor ayam, sayur lodeh, sambal goreng ati (beef liver in sambal), acar, telur pindang (hard boiled tea egg), abon (beef floss), and koya powder (mixture of soy and dried shrimp powder).

The process involves soaking the lontong in soup until it is submerged hence the name dekem meaning "immersion" in Pemalang Javanese dialect.

Usually served with hard-boiled eggs and kerupuk jangek or krupuk kulit (cow skin crackers).

It is made of slices of lontong, fried tofu, and peanut sauce and served on a teak leaf plate.

[16] Arem-arem is the smaller size lontong filled with diced vegetables such as carrot, common bean, and potato seasoned with salt and red chili, or tofu, oncom, and tempeh; sometimes also filled with minced meat or abon (beef floss), are eaten as a snack.

The texture of arem-arem snacks is softer compared to those of common lontong, due to the thinner banana leaf, addition of coconut milk, and prolonged boiling and steaming period.

The term lontong in Malaysia and Singapore usually refers to a dish that consists of rice cakes in a coconut-based soup such as sayur lodeh containing shrimp and vegetables like chopped cabbage, turnip, and carrots.

In the east coast states of Peninsular Malaysia, nasi himpit is eaten with peanut sauce (kuah kacang) for breakfast.