Made curry largely following these recipes:
- 3 onions (3 onions = 2 lb 13 oz or 1.3 kg)
- 3 carrots (3 carrots = 8 oz or 230 g)
- 1 russet potato (1 russet potato = 9.5 oz or 270 g)
- 8 mushrooms (8 mushrooms = 9.2 oz or 260 g)
- 2 lb lean beef stew meat (2 lb = 907 g)
- Kosher salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 2 Tbsp all-purpose flour
- 2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil (2 Tbsp = 1 Tbsp for beef, 1 Tbsp for onion)
- 2 Tbsp unsalted butter (2 Tbsp = 1 Tbsp for beef, 1 Tbsp for onion)
- 2 cloves garlic (minced)
- 1 inch ginger (1″ = 2.5 cm) (grated)
- 1 Tbsp curry powder
- 2 Tbsp tomato paste (or ketchup)
- 1 cup red wine
- 8 cups beef stock (8 cups = 2 QT or 1.9 L)
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 box Japanese curry roux (1 box = 7-8.4 oz or 200-240g) (see Notes for homemade roux recipe)
- 2 Tbsp milk
- 1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
- 1/4 apple (I use Fuji apple, optional)
- Furkujinzuke (red pickled daikon) (to serve, optional)
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Gather all the ingredients.
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Cut the onion into thin slices. Cut the carrot diagonally while rotating it a quarter between cuts (in Japanese we call this cutting technique “rangiri”).
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Halve the potato, and then cut each piece into quarters. Soak in water for 15 minutes to remove the starch.
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Clean the mushrooms with a pastry brush (don’t wash mushrooms) and slice them.
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Cut the beef into 1 ½ inch cubes and sprinkle salt and pepper. Coat the meat with the flour.
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In a cast iron skillet, heat oil and butter on high heat. Add the beef but do not crowd the skillet. Do a second batch if necessary. Cook beef until brown.
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In a large heavy bottomed pot or large pot, heat the butter on medium heat and add the onion. Add the olive oil and stir to coat the onion with the oil. Add 1 tsp. salt after 10 minutes and sauté the onion until it’s soft and translucent.
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Add garlic, ginger, curry powder, and tomato paste and sauté for 2 minutes.
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Add the beef and the wine and let the alcohol evaporate.
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Add the vegetable and pour the beef broth until it covers the vegetables. Cover with the lid and bring it to a boil.
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When boiling, skim off the scum and fat from the soup. After skimming, I dip the fine mesh in a measuring cup to clean. It’s easy to remove the scum/fat from the fine mesh this way.
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Add bay leaf, cover with the lid but leaving slightly ajar, and simmer until vegetables are tender.
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Once in a while, skim the broth. Add the rest of beef stock (if you have any leftover and if necessary).
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Using a ladle and with fork/chopsticks, dissolve the curry roux. If the curry is too thick for your taste, add water to dilute. From this point, stir often and be careful not to burn the curry!
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Add milk and Worcestershire sauce. Grate the apple to add a hint of sweetness. Simmer uncovered on low heat, stirring occasionally, until the curry becomes thick. Serve the curry with Japanese rice on the side topped with fukujinzuke.
Japanese curry roux: Homemade recipe, click here.
Recipe by Namiko Chen of Just One Cookbook. All images and content on this site are copyright protected. Please do not use my images without my permission. If you’d like to share this recipe on your site, please re-write the recipe and link to this post as the original source. Thank you.
Learn how to make Japanese Curry Roux from scratch. Only 5 ingredients! This easy recipe will have you cook up many delicious pots of Japanese curry.
- 3 Tbsp unsalted butter
- 4 Tbsp all purpose flour (You can use GF flour as well)
- 1 Tbsp curry powder
- 1 Tbsp garam masala
- ¼ tsp cayenne pepper (optional for spicy)
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Gather all the ingredients.
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In a small saucepan, melt the butter over low heat.
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When the butter is completely melted, add the flour. Stir to combine the butter and flour.
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Soon the butter and flour fuse and swell. Keep stirring because the roux will easily burn. Cook for 20 minutes on low heat.
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After 20 minutes, the roux will turn to light brown color.
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Add the garam masala, curry powder, and cayenne pepper.
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Cook and stir for 30 seconds and remove from the heat. If you don’t use it immediately, let it cool in an airtight container with lid and store in refrigerator for a month or freezer for 3-4 months.
Curry Roux: This recipe yields 1/3 cup roux; enough for your curry recipe that requires 4 cups liquid. If you’re not sure, make double portion as everyone prefers different consistency for curry and you may like it thicker (requires more curry roux).
Recipe by Namiko Chen of Just One Cookbook. All images and content on this site are copyright protected. Please do not use my images without my permission. If you’d like to share this recipe on your site, please re-write the recipe in your own words and link to this post as the original source. Thank you.
Curry Notes:
Out of the box, the golden curry roux tastes pretty good! It does have a slight out of the box flavor, a little bit hint of MSG and ramen, but still solid. I learned a lot about roux in this process — the secret is regular stirring and time — it really does take ~25 min to make a dark roux, which has less thickening properties, but more depth in flavor.
Making own roux was easy, and I’m looking forward towards making more customized curry roux. I made a blank flour/butter only roux and added the curry powders directly into the broth, I think this was all-right, but it would have been better to fry the aromatics, even for a little bit in the roux to bring out the flavors a bit more. It tasted a little powdery.
Gold potatoes are a must for curry — it holds shape better.
Rangiri cutting – cuting carrots at and angle with quarter turn makes food more attractive with little effort. Definitely will incorporate into future cooking experiences.
“Peel the carrot and cut into bite sizes. I use Japanese cutting technique called “Rangiri”. Cut the carrot diagonally while rotating it a quarter between cuts.”
3 lbs potatoes, 2 lbs carrots, 4 lbs meat made ~2 pots of food. Enough for 15 people.
Simmering beef for ~1 hr does help tenderize the beef. For curry, I did want some tooth — so it wasn’t quite slow cooker tender, but chewable.
Beef/Food prep Notes:
For food prep, salting meat is always a good idea, and searing meat the night before — as long as it’s being fully cooked again, doesn’t make any noticeable difference in toughness or flavor. This was determined by a small experiment: I made three batches of meat, one seared the night before and put into fridge overnight, one salted and seared immediately, and one seared without salt. All three batches were turned into curry. The two salted batches tasted virtually identical. The unsalted batch did not yield any difference in toughness, and of course, was bland.
The best was the salted, seared meat, immediately before use, but by a suuper thin margin. The only time I actually noticed a difference in flavor was the tasting of the salted, seared meat right after it was seared — it still retained the crispness and the maillard flavors that are intuitively lost in refrigeration, but that I think are still somewhat retained when made into curry/soup.
Curry cooking, final curry, beef test (unsalted fresh, salted fresh, salted frigerated), final beef curry test.