Cómo hacer el mejor curry del mundo (no es el indio) – Transcript

00:00Hi there, there are many versions of curry in the world, but my personal favorite is the Japanese version. It's made up of a creamy umami sauce that covers al dente vegetables and juicy meat, mixed with white rice. I don't know, for me it's a dish that makes me feel at home, although obviously I'm not very Japanese, I couldn't be further from the truth, but it's very comforting.

00:18And best of all, it's a very versatile dish that adapts to the time you have. Today I bring you two versions, one that takes 30 minutes with chicken and another that's a little more elaborate, a hardier beef stew. Let's get started. So let's move on to the first, faster version with chicken, which starts by gutting five thighs.

00:33It can be made with chicken breast, but I like thighs for this type of stew because they're juicier and add more flavor. But anyway, do it however you like. The vegetable part is wonderful because you can add whatever you have in the fridge. It's a good leftover dish. The most typical things I always add are two potatoes, three carrots, an onion and a bit of turnip, but broccoli would be great.

00:52Cabbage, zucchini, pumpkin, sweet potato, in short, anything goes. Add into medium cubes of similar size. You can also add mushrooms. The Szechuan mushrooms are the most logical choice in a Japanese curry. I also added the white part of five finely chopped Chinese chives.

01:09Let's go to a large frying pan or kettle, preheat it, add oil and sear the thighs on both sides until they turn a nice golden color and leave that caramelized bottom in the pan. Pure flavor, which we are going to use to further enhance the umami of the curry. About a minute and a half on each side.

01:24Remove it, add the vegetables and saute them for five minutes. The mushrooms and chives will come later. In the meantime, we are going to cut the thighs into bite-sized pieces and when the five minutes have passed, we add the mushrooms and the spring onion and saute them for a couple more minutes. Now we are going to add the liquid.

01:41You can just add water, but in Japan they would normally use a dos, which is the basic broth of Japanese cuisine made with kombu seaweed and dried seafood. A middle ground is chicken broth. A supermarket broth is enough to give us a good base for the curry and is more practical than making one from scratch.

01:58One L200, mix well, bring to the boil, lower the heat to medium and let it cook for ten minutes covered. Well, we have practically all the ingredients ready, but we are missing the most important one, which is the curry. For this first simpler curry, we are going to use the very famous Japanese instant curry cubes.

02:13This is the most famous brand, Golden Curry. There are a few more, but the truth is that this one is so good that I almost never buy another one. These pastils are basically a sauce made of fat and butter, which is used to thicken things like bechamel sauce, but it can also be used to thicken broths, as is the case here.

02:29In addition to that sauce, they have curry, which is what gives it its flavor. They are very good, very cheap, and they can really fix a meal in an instant. I'll leave the link in the description to buy them, but if you don't want to buy them, you won't be able to find them. In the next version, we're going to make them from scratch because they're really easy to make. But for this first version, we're going to use pastils.

02:46For 100ml of liquid that we've added, we're going to use 220g of pastils. This should be the texture of the sauce, thick, but some people prefer it more liquid. If that's your case, add more broth or water until it has the consistency you want. Keep in mind that it will thicken quite a bit when it cools down a bit.

03:03Add the chicken and its juices back in. Mix it all together and I like to give the curry an extra seasoning, which will give it a little extra sweetness, but it's optional. First, half a grated sweet apple, which will give it extra sweetness. A good drizzle of ketchup. I know it sounds weird, but it's basically tomato paste, vinegar and sugar.

03:19A dash of Worcestershire sauce, very tasty. And finally, a dash of soy sauce. Mix well and there you have it. Now I like to turn off the heat and let it rest for 15 minutes so that the chicken finishes cooking with the residual heat and all the ingredients get to know each other.

03:34To serve it, it is absolutely mandatory to do it with white rice. If it is the japonica variety, even better, the kind that is usually sold as sushi rice, fluffy and sticky. A good amount of curry and in Japan, they always put a little benesoga, which is pickled ginger and wasabi paste next to the curry dish.

03:51I'm going to finish it off with some sasimi-do-garasi, a mix of 7 Japanese spices. It's quite spicy and it also comes with chopped green onions. And there we have it.

04:10I know I used chopsticks, but for me this is a spoon dish. Sorry, I'm a westerner. Mmm, it's amazing that in 30 minutes you can have such a wonderful dish, such an intense sauce with all dente vegetables, juicy thighs and it's really important to mix it with the rice.

04:27I mean, the sauce is good on its own, but where it really shines is when you mix it with the rice, with the pickles, with the wasabi, with everything. I mean, to me this really seems like a perfect dish, by the way, for a lunchbox. It gets better with the days, even better the next day. Mmm.

04:43Let's move on to the beef version, which takes a lot longer, but it's not an eternal dish either. It's ready in about an hour and a half. Let's start by cutting one kilogram of beef for stewing. This was the rump into medium-sized cubes. Take the opportunity to clean any silvery connective tissue that you see, as this will not fall apart during cooking, unlike the white part that will.

05:01You can leave that one. We also remove any very thick pieces of fat and then season generously with salt and pepper. Let's go to a large saucepan, preheated over medium-high heat with oil and sear the meat on both sides until golden brown. I recommend that you do this in two batches so that the temperature of the pod does not drop too much and the meat does not become overcooked.

05:20Be careful not to burn the bottom, as there is a lot of flavor there. Unlike the previous curry, in this one we are going to make our own broth, taking advantage of the flavor of the beef itself and a couple more enhancers. We add one and a half liters of water to all the beef and now 15 grams of kombu seaweed, which is the base of Japanese dashi and provides a lot of umami.

05:39Here we are going to turn the heat to medium so that the broth infuses for a while, since we have to take it out before it boils because if it boils it leaves a strange texture. We are also going to add 5 dehydrated sikui and 3 bay leaves. I bought these in Tokyo and they are the size of my fist, so you may have to add 6 or 7.

05:56We are going to remove the impurities that rise to the surface with a skimmer and when it smokes enough, we take the kombu out. We finish bringing it to a boil and when it boils, we cover it and cook it for 40 minutes on medium-low heat. We are going to use this time to prepare the rest of the things. Just the vegetables, I added the same ones as in the other curry, potatoes, carrots, onions and turnips.

06:16Turnips, by the way, are one of my favorites. They are super tasty. If you have never tried it in a stew, I recommend that you do because you will be amazed. As I promised, we are going to make the curry paste from scratch. It's not that complicated. Let's start by adding 75 grams of butter to a frying pan. Let's melt it and add 75 grams of wheat flour.

06:34Let's cook this curry a little longer than usual. In 2 minutes it would be ready for white curry, but let's make it golden or toasted, which will enhance the flavor of the final curry a little more and also intensify its color. Let's cook it over medium heat, stirring very frequently. Little by little it will start to take on color and its consistency will be more liquid.

06:53When it has this color, let's add 50 grams of curry powder. The curry powder is important, there are better and worse quality ones, but also spicy and not spicy, more or less spicy. Some are more spicy and others less. Well, find a decent one that you like. Let's mix it well and let's toast the paste for about 3-4 minutes until it is smooth and very aromatic.

07:13You can store this paste in the fridge for a week without any problem, or you can double or triple the ingredients, freeze it in cubes and have it ready as if it were your own Japanese curry pills. After 40 minutes of cooking the beef, we are going to add the vegetables. Mix, cover and leave it for 20 more minutes, 1 hour of cooking in total.

07:30Once ready, the meat should be soft and tender. If it is tough, it does not mean that you have overcooked it, it is just that it is not getting enough time. If you have overcooked it, it will be dry and that is not very effective, unfortunately. But anyway, with the sauce it will still be juicy. We are going to mix the curry paste with a few tablespoons of broth to make it easier to dissolve in the saucepan.

07:48With this amount you will use all the paste. If it is a little liquid, you can turn the heat to high and reduce it and if it is too thick, add more water. It is time to season it in the same way as we did with the chicken. Half a grated apple, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce.

08:06I know these three ingredients may sound a bit strange, but they are very typical of Japanese cuisine, which has many influences from the West, specifically the United States. We taste and correct the salt and it's ready. Well, almost, like all stews, especially beef stews, it will benefit a lot from resting as long as possible.

08:23If you make it the day before and leave it in the fridge overnight, the next day the rice will have evolved and it will be a completely different dish. To serve, it's similar to the other one. First, plenty of white rice, and by the way, if you don't know how to make good white rice, I'll leave a link in the description to my video about nigiri, which is a type of sushi in which I teach you how to make white rice of the japonica variety.