Cooking Experiment: Japanese Beef Curry
Dec. 7th, 2013 09:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tuftearsI don't know if I've mentioned it but I had a rather tasty encounter with Japanese curry at a place named Muracci's the other week. If you're not familiar with it, it's basically a sweet curry-flavored gravy slathered over a tasty thing like chicken katsu, with rice.
When![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dracosphynx mentioned that he'd had Japanese curry up in SF the other weekend, I got tempted to try making it myself. After picking up the ingredients yesterday, I commenced today, following this recipe except that I used the crockpot to simmer the beef, carrots, and potatoes, and since I didn't have any garam masala, I needed to improvise using this spice mix.
This was my first time trying to make a roux... I think I may have made a mistake along the way, since it never really bubbled the way that a gravy is supposed to. Maybe the original recipe had too much flour? Or maybe I was supposed to add some kind of liquid to the roux as well as the butter and flour? It's a mystery!
So how is it? Stronger (spicier) than the curry I had at the restaurant, I think, probably due to my improvised spice mix. I may have overcooked the beef a bit, in attempting to brown it before I put it into the crockpot-- for that, I should either use bigger pieces or skip the browning step, and I should add more liquid to the roux. Overall it is a hearty stew-like fare, good for warming you up in the winter.
The downside is that it's also got a lot of steps to cook it, which I disapprove for stew-like fare. If I were going to try cooking it again, I'd avoid the crockpot and go with a curry gravy on top of breaded chicken breasts, a la katsu.
When
dracosphynx mentioned that he'd had Japanese curry up in SF the other weekend, I got tempted to try making it myself. After picking up the ingredients yesterday, I commenced today, following this recipe except that I used the crockpot to simmer the beef, carrots, and potatoes, and since I didn't have any garam masala, I needed to improvise using this spice mix.This was my first time trying to make a roux... I think I may have made a mistake along the way, since it never really bubbled the way that a gravy is supposed to. Maybe the original recipe had too much flour? Or maybe I was supposed to add some kind of liquid to the roux as well as the butter and flour? It's a mystery!
So how is it? Stronger (spicier) than the curry I had at the restaurant, I think, probably due to my improvised spice mix. I may have overcooked the beef a bit, in attempting to brown it before I put it into the crockpot-- for that, I should either use bigger pieces or skip the browning step, and I should add more liquid to the roux. Overall it is a hearty stew-like fare, good for warming you up in the winter.
The downside is that it's also got a lot of steps to cook it, which I disapprove for stew-like fare. If I were going to try cooking it again, I'd avoid the crockpot and go with a curry gravy on top of breaded chicken breasts, a la katsu.
