Japanese Beef Curry

Serves 2

Ingredients
200g of beef chunks (you can buy this from the deli section of most supermkts)
1 big yellow onion - sliced
1 mid sized carrot - cut into big pieces
1 big potato - cut into big pieces
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp olive oil

Boiling water 

55g of Japanese HOT curry pre-mix (That's about 1/4 of the package)

Seasoning (beef)
Salt
Pepper
Dried mixed herbs - I use McCormick brand

Optional

Corn niblets / mixed peas - half a cup

Method

- Rinse the beef chunks and pat dry. Marinate with abit of salt, pepper and dried herbs. Set aside.

- Using a saucepan that you can both fry and stew the curry, heat up the butter in the pan on medium heat. Don't burn the butter. Brown the beef chunks on both sides on high heat. Remove from pan when both sides are browned and half cooked. 

- There'll be some beef juices left in the pan, use that to fry the onions, add some olive oil if it's too dry.

- Cooked the onions till they are soft and brown, add in the beef chunks and carrots. Add boiling water till all the ingredients are fully submerged. Cover the pan and bring to a boil. 

- Turn the heat to low and continue stewing the beef for about 1hour till it softens. Check periodically and give it a quick stir to make sure there are no pieces of meat/vege stuck onto the bottom of pan. Add more water if necessary. Add the potatoes when the beef has been cooking for about 30-45mins.

- After 1-1.5 hours, add in the curry pre-mix and cook for another 20mins on low heat. This is also the time to put in the corn bits. Add more water if the curry is too thick.

- Serve with white rice/udon.

Note

- Avoid cutting the vegetables too small. Because after 2 hours of stewing, they will disintegrate!
- I find that the curry dries up quite quickly so I have to keep adding water. 

- Instead of beef, you can replace with chicken but preferably boneless thigh meat cos it's more tender than breast meat. 

- It's good if you have at least 1.5 - 2 hours to stew the beef, otherwise, it may not be tender enough. If you use chicken, it probably won't take as long.