It’s funny, every time my girlfriend sleeps over, she wakes up much later than me.
Like SIGNIFICANTLY later than me.
Like I finish 3 assignments for work and check all my emails and play several phone games and submit all of my taxes for the year. And she’s still sleeping.
But once she finally wakes up, she’s usually pretty hungry.
So I’ll go over to the fridge and the pantry and come up with a full-on menu for her. I have to be careful how I word it, to make it as appetizing as possible for the semi-picky girlfriend.
I’ll say [menu item 1], and get a slight response.
Okay, 6/10 for that one.
Then I’ll say [menu item 2], and no response.
1/10.
Then I’ll say [menu item 3], and so on and so forth until I finally hit that high-pitched “okay!!!” that means I found the craving.
But sometimes, I just have to straight up prove how good it is, even if she doesn’t like it at first.
Enter, my Japanese Curry.
When I first met her, just the mention of the word curry was an automatic and resounding no.
Then I made it for her.
And it transformed her into a believer.
I curried her favor, if you will.
Moral of the story?
Sometimes you just have to force-feed people even if they don’t want it.
Haha, just kidding.
But seriously.
Japanese Curry
Ingredients
1 tbsp. butter + 1 tsp. olive oil
1 large onion, sliced thinly
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 Japanese curry blocks
Thinly sliced beef (frozen is fine)
can sub pork, chicken, whatever
2 tbsp. mirin
2 tbsp. soy sauce
~1.5 cups water
~1.5 cups chicken stock
Salt
Pepper
Sugar
Red chili flakes
Steps
1 - Heat up a big pot to medium-low heat. Add the butter and olive oil and let it melt.
2 - Add your whole sliced onion. We’re going to caramelize it here, which takes a while. Basically, you want to keep the onions moving and allow them to slowly let out their sugars without burning them. It should take at least a half hour.
Yes, caramelizing takes a long time. If you don’t have the time or patience, no worries, just cook the onions down for about 5-10 minutes. But I will say I think this makes a HUGE difference to how delicious the curry comes out. This is I guess the part that I would say makes this curry special.
That was a very brief explanation of a kind-of-complicated technique. Check out this video for a better explanation.
3 - Add a pinch of salt, sugar, and red pepper flakes about five minutes into the onions cooking down. When you’re nearly done caramelizing, add the garlic.
Garlic burns quick — that’s why we add it at the end.
4 - Add your chicken stock, water, soy sauce, and mirin into the pot. Scrape everything off the bottom of the pot and combine.
Again, just make do with what you have. If you don’t have chicken stock, just add all water. If you don’t have mirin, that’s fine. It’ll still be good.
5 - Bring it up to a boil over high heat. Then add your Japanese curry blocks and let them dissolve into the liquid. Add in your thinly sliced beef here, too.
If you’re adding other kinds of meat, be aware of how long it needs to cook. Thinly sliced beef takes like a minute to cook, which is why I add it at the end. If you’re doing chunks of chicken or something, you may need to sear it off beforehand or add it much earlier.
Also I just use frozen sliced beef.
6 - Reduce the heat to medium-low, then just let it simmer until it reaches your desired consistency. Might take anywhere from 15-45 minutes.
I like it somewhere in between thick and watery. Goldilocks, just right.
7 - Serve it over rice and turn your curry-hating significant other into a believer.
Pro Tip — Serve it over ramen noodles. Secret recipe: unlocked. You got curry ramen noodles.
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