Stirring Something Deeper: Why Gen Z Indonesian-Americans Are Finding Therapy in Their Grandmothers' Recipes

There's a moment Priya Santoso, 24, describes almost like a meditation. She's standing in her Portland apartment, mortar and pestle in hand, grinding together shallots, galangal, and candlenuts into a paste her grandmother used to call bumbu dasar. The kitchen smells like her childhood in a way no candle ever could. Her phone is face-down on the counter. Her shoulders have dropped about three inches.

"I didn't realize I was doing something for my mental health," she says. "I just knew I felt better after."

Priya isn't alone. Quietly, in apartments and college dorm kitchenettes from Seattle to Atlanta, young Indonesian-Americans are turning back to the food traditions of their families — not just to eat, but to heal.

The Recipe Box as Time Machine

For many second-generation Indonesian-Americans, traditional cooking was something that happened around them growing up — a grandmother's domain, a Sunday ritual they watched but never fully participated in. Now, in their twenties and navigating a world that feels relentlessly chaotic, some are reaching back for those memories with both hands.

Dana Kusuma, 22, a nursing student in Houston, started calling her nenek (grandmother) in Surabaya every weekend during her second year of school. The calls started as a way to stay connected. They turned into cooking lessons.

"She walks me through everything — the way to slice the lemongrass, how long to toast the coconut, why you add the kecap manis at the end and not before," Dana says. "It's an hour where I'm not thinking about exams or rent or anything. I'm just listening to her voice and trying not to burn the tempeh."

Her go-to dish has become soto ayam, the bright, turmeric-laced chicken soup that shows up at Indonesian tables for everything from Tuesday dinners to Lebaran feasts. She makes it at least twice a month. Her non-Indonesian roommates have started requesting it.

What Therapists Are Noticing

This isn't just a feel-good anecdote. Mental health professionals who work with immigrant and second-generation communities say they're seeing a real pattern.

"There's a concept called 'cultural grounding' — the idea that connecting with your heritage can be a protective factor against anxiety and depression, especially for people navigating bicultural identity," explains Dr. Michelle Tanaka, a licensed therapist in Los Angeles who works with a significant number of Asian-American clients. "Food is one of the most embodied ways to access that. It involves all your senses, it connects you to memory, and it often involves community or connection with family. That's a lot of therapeutic boxes checked at once."

Dr. Tanaka points to research on intergenerational food rituals — the passing of recipes from elder to younger — as particularly meaningful. "When a grandmother teaches you her recipe, she's giving you more than instructions. She's transmitting identity, love, survival knowledge. That lands somewhere deep."

There's also the mindfulness angle. Cooking complex Indonesian dishes — the kind that involve long lists of fresh aromatics, careful layering of spice, and techniques that can't really be rushed — demands a kind of focused presence that screens and scrolling simply don't allow.

"You can't make a proper rendang while doom-scrolling," laughs Reza Hartono, 26, a graphic designer in Chicago who started cooking traditional Javanese food after a rough breakup left him feeling unmoored. "The process forces you to be there. That's the whole point."

Lumpia, From Scratch, With Your Whole Chest

If soto ayam is the dish people reach for when they want comfort, lumpia — the Indonesian spring roll with its thin, delicate wrapper and savory filling — is the one they make when they want connection.

Because lumpia, in most Indonesian households, is not a solo project. It's a production. You set up an assembly line. Someone makes the filling, someone rolls, someone fries. It's a social dish by design.

Jasmine Wibowo, 23, rediscovered this during a visit home to her family in suburban New Jersey. Her aunt pulled out the recipe their late grandmother had written on a piece of paper so old it was practically translucent.

"We spent the whole afternoon making them," Jasmine says. "My mom, my aunt, my little cousins. Everyone had a job. And it hit me — this is what community actually feels like. Not a group chat. This."

She took photos of the recipe. She's since made lumpia with friends in her Brooklyn apartment three times. Each time, she says, it becomes an event. People linger. Conversations go deep. No one checks their phone.

The TikTok Pipeline (Yes, Really)

Interestingly, social media — often blamed for Gen Z's mental health struggles — is also playing a role in this culinary reclamation. Indonesian cooking content has been quietly building a devoted following on TikTok and Instagram, with creators sharing recipes in casual, accessible formats that make dishes like gado-gado or es cendol feel approachable rather than intimidating.

For some young Indonesian-Americans, a short video of someone making nasi goreng at midnight is the spark that sends them calling their mom for the real recipe. The algorithm, for once, doing something useful.

"I saw this video of someone making opor ayam and I literally started crying," admits Dani Prasetyo, 21, a college student in Austin. "I hadn't had it since I was maybe eight. I called my mom that night. She talked me through the whole thing."

He made it. It didn't taste exactly like his mom's. But he says that almost made it better — it gave them something to work on together, over the phone, across a thousand miles.

More Than a Meal

What's striking about all these stories is that the food itself is almost secondary. The soto ayam matters less than the act of making it. The lumpia is a vehicle for something that can't be packaged or delivered.

In a generation that grew up with unprecedented access to convenience — food delivery, instant everything, digital connection — there's something quietly radical about choosing the slow, tactile, imperfect process of cooking something from scratch, guided by a grandmother's voice or a handwritten note on aging paper.

It's not a cure. Therapists are clear about that. But as a supplement to wellness — as a way of touching something real when the world feels abstract — it turns out your lola's recipe box might be doing more work than you realized.

Priya finishes her bumbu dasar, scrapes it into the pan, and listens to it sizzle. The smell fills the apartment. Somewhere across an ocean, her grandmother made this same motion, in this same sequence, her whole life.

"I feel like I'm carrying something forward," Priya says. "And that feels like enough, most days."