Back in the early 2000s when I was a young USAF Staff Sergeant stationed in Okinawa, Japan, we routinely found ourselves exploring the island for the best eats. Fresh seafood, sushi/sashimi, ramen and soba shops, sukiyaki, and amazing hibachi joints were on every street and corner. It was amazing! However, lunch break was typically short so we had to find something nearby and quick when we got the hankering for anything other than that digestive stopping, gut wrenching, flavorless chow hall food. The answer was simple, and came in the form of a yellow, fast food style curry restaurant…..yes the one and only CoCo Ichibanya Curry House! Refreshing, mild Japanese curry with endless meat choices and rice. Pork and chicken cutlets were our go-to orders, but thin sliced beef, quail eggs, chicken karaage (fried chicken chunks essentially), and numerous other options all were great choices. While this chain initially was only located in and around Japan, it has since grown global and offers locations around the world. I can pretty much speak for any military servicemember ever stationed on Okinawa, once you get that first hit of CoCos you are immediately addicted! It is the meth of all fast food curry houses, lol. Thankfully, their pork, beef, and vegetable sauces are now available online so everyone can enjoy their own CoCos at home. Now that your mouth is watering for their recipe, I’m going to slightly disappoint you by saying the following recipe is actually not CoCos, but just a tribute! It is fairly simple and pretty damn close to the original so trust me when I say you won’t be disappointed. Check out the following recipe, try it yourself, and let me know what you think!
If you are new to Japanese curry, let me start by saying it is completely different from the Indian or Thai style curry you may be used to seeing or eating. Japanese curry is typically milder and closer to gravy, really. So all we are doing to make a delicious meal is creating that base curry sauce, cooking some veggies in it, then finishing up with some thin sliced beef. Simple, few ingredients, and belly filling! The one curry roux I have seen available globally in most markets and standard grocery stores is S&B’s Golden Curry. It comes in a variety of flavors, but for today I will be using their Medium Hot version.
Start with a stock pot on medium to medium-high heat. Add 4 cups of beef stock and the curry roux cubes. It is quite mild, really, so I used double their recommended serving and went with 3-4 of their cubes, which technically are double sized so basically half the pack. Remember, you can always add more if you feel like you need more flavor, but if you add too much it’s much more of a hassle to keep adding stock to bring the levels back to correct. Simmer this mixture until the cubes dissolve, about 6-8 minutes typically. While this is cooking, prepare the veggies separately. We want to thin slice 2 cups of carrots into circles or half moon shapes depending on the size. Next, chop another 2 cups of onion into standard bite size pieces similar to that of the carrots. Finally, dice 2 cups of potatoes into bite sized chunks as well.
Type, color, shape, etc etc is all up to you. Just be sure to make everything similar so it will cook evenly. First, add the carrots and let them simmer in the sauce for about 5 minutes. Follow the carrots with the potatoes for an additional 5 minutes, or until just softening. We don’t want mush or mashed potatoes so don’t overcook them! Finally, add the onions and let it all simmer for an additional 2-3 minutes until the onions become translucent. If you feel the curry sauce is a bit thin at this point, which it probably is, scoop out a couple ladles of the sauce only, pour into a small bowl, add a few tablespoons of corn starch, make the slurry, and return it back to the main pot. This will help thicken things up and create that gravy consistency we are trying to achieve.
Once you are satisfied with your sauce and the veggies are softened, kill the heat to prevent over cooking. The beef I used was thin sliced sukiyaki, but you can use whatever you have available as long as it is very thin. I took the below pictured beef, divided it into a few portions, then took a couple and further cut it into bite sized pieces before vacuum sealing the rest and freezing for another day’s batch.
The heat from the hot curry mix should be plenty to cook the beef to a perfect medium rare. If you are evil and enjoy terrible things, go ahead and cook yours until it’s a chewy jerky, but don’t complain because I told you so! That is pretty much it. The curry already has plenty of flavor so you don’t need to add any additional salt or pepper. Check that out…filling bellies and reducing high blood pressure in one simple meal, lol!
Now for all you CoCo addicts and/or skilled cooks, I have a couple pro tips to make this Japanese Beef Curry even better. First, spend the few bucks on Amazon and just buy the prepackaged sauce. It won’t be as self-fulfilling as making it from scratch, but your taste buds will quickly trigger your brain back to those glorious meals of yesteryear.
Secondly, and definitely a massive amount of more work, you can make the curry roux from complete scratch, ingredient by ingredient. Honestly, I don’t think it’s worth the trouble, but for all you overachievers out there, the following list will get you pretty damn close to the original CoCos recipe.
· 8 tablespoons of cumin
· 3 tablespoons of turmeric
· 4 tablespoons of coriander
· 4 tablespoons of cardamom
· 2 teaspoons of fenugreek
· 2 teaspoons of nutmeg
· 2 teaspoons of cinnamon
· 2 teaspoons of allspice
· 1 teaspoon of clove
· 1 teaspoon laurel
Blend with a spice grinder until a smooth powder, then combine with a few tablespoons of ghee (clarified butter) and flour. This should create a more solid form similar to that of the S&B curry roux cubes, for storage in a sealed container. Otherwise, just dump all that fancy spice work into some stock and go with it. Not my cup of tea, but hey, you do you! Enjoy the fruits of your labor!
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