Quick Japanese Curry Recipe From Scratch (手軽カレーライス)

Today I'm going to show you how to make a rule-less Japanese curry from scratch in under 30 minutes, so stick around! Japanese curry is one of my favorite comfort foods of all time, and version 4 of my recipe happens to be one of the most popular videos on this channel. Although I used some hacks to speed things up, it still takes about 3 hours to make. Most of that time doesn't require your full attention, but I wanted to see if I could get the cooking time down far enough so you could feasibly pull this off on a weeknight. The result is this meaty Japanese curry. I used ground beef, and the vegetables are cut smaller, but it's almost as flavorful, and it takes less than 1 fifth of the time. Looks delicious, right? Let's start with a look at our ingredients. For the curry base, I'm using 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil, ¼ teaspoon of baking soda, 2 extra large cloves of garlic, a large onion, a small knob of ginger, a small carrot, 2 tablespoons of Japanese curry powder, and 300 grams of ground beef. For the curry sauce, I'm using 1 ½ cups of vegetable stock, 2 tablespoons of soy sauce, 1 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce, 1 tablespoon of honey, 1 tablespoon of ketchup, 1 teaspoon of cocoa powder, and ¼ teaspoon of salt. Finally, for the vegetables, I have a large carrot, 4 small potatoes, and 75 grams of frozen green peas. I'm gonna start by mixing the veggie stock with the soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, honey, ketchup, cocoa powder, and salt. Then you wanna stir everything together. Don't worry about dissolving the clumps of cocoa powder. Those'll work themselves out in the pot. For the potatoes, I've already washed and peeled them, and I just wanna cut them into ½ inch cubes. They don't have to be perfect, but you do wanna cut them fairly small so they cook through quickly. Then I'm gonna throw these into a microwave-safe bowl. Same deal for the carrots. I'm gonna quarter it lengthwise, and chop it up into pieces that are about ⅓ inch in size. By the way, I'm using the usual veggies for curry today, but you can use whatever you have in the fridge. Vegetables like zucchini, eggplant, and cauliflower all work great for this. Okay, let's get these carrots into the bowl as well, and then I'm gonna cover it up with a lid. Now you wanna pop these into a microwave set at 800 watts for 4 minutes. By par-cooking these tough veggies in the microwave, we're able to cut about 15 minutes out of the stovetop cooking time. While we wait for those to cook, let's get started on our curry base. I'm gonna start by grating the garlic into a pot. I'm using a daikon grater because the wide gaps between the teeth keep them from getting clogged. Next, I'm gonna grate the ginger into the pot as well. If you don't have a grater, you can also use a food processor. The idea here is to puree these ingredients so they cook faster. Now I'm gonna grate in the carrot. This'll not only add some natural sweetness, the dissolved vegetables also give our Japanese curry its thickness without making a roux. Finally, I'm gonna grate in our onion. Having a base of well-caramelized onions is the secret to good Japanese curry, and by grating them like this, it's gonna cut the caramelization time from an hour down to about 6 minutes. Then I'm gonna add the baking soda and vegetable oil and mix this all around. The baking soda helps break down the cell walls of our veggies, which makes them cook faster, and it's also gonna raise the pH of the mixture, speeding up caramelization. Okay, I think our potatoes and carrots are just about done, so let's check them out. Perfect! These are fully cooked, so let's start on our curry. Before we start cooking, I wanna send a special thank you to my supporters who helped to make this video possible. If you're learning something new from my recipes, hit the link in the description down below to see how you can pitch in. I'm gonna start by putting our grated vegetables on the stove over high heat to boil off any excess liquid. The liquid needs to evaporate before we can get any caramelization to happen, so the faster you can burn this off, the faster your curry will be done. Once most of the liquid is gone, you're gonna wanna start stirring the mixture to keep it from burning. It's gonna start smelling amazing pretty quickly, but keep going until the mixture is reduced to about a third of the initial volume and it's looking nice and brown. Once it's looking like this, you wanna add the curry powder and toast the spices for about 20 to 30 seconds. This draws out the oils in the curry powder, making it even more fragrant. By the way, if you need a recipe for Japanese curry powder, check the description below for a link to my curry powder video. Okay, this is smelling ridiculously good, so it's time to add our ground meat. I'm using beef today, but you can use whatever you want. If you wanna make it plant-based, you can also substitute in a mixture of flavorful minced mushrooms like maitake, shiitake, or porcini. Keep the meat moving around the pan while breaking it up with the side of a spatula. You wanna get the meat nice and brown before adding the liquid. This is looking pretty good, so I'm gonna go ahead and add the vegetable stock mixture, along with the cooked carrots and potatoes. Now we just need to let this simmer until the curry thickens up and the flavors have had a chance to meld. I'm gonna give it about 10 minutes. What's happening here is that the grated vegetables we caramelized are breaking down, which makes this curry nice and thick, without making a separate brew. This not only cuts out a step, it also makes it a lot healthier since you're skipping out on the extra fat and flour. Once the curry starts to thicken, turn down the heat and stir it regularly to keep it from burning. Okay, this is looking perfect, so I'm gonna add some frozen peas and stir them into the curry to warm them up. Man, I'm starving, so let's get this plated up. I've got a plate here with some hot rice on it, and I'm gonna spoon the curry right next to it. Just look at how thick this is, and it smells mind-blowingly good. Okay, I'm gonna get another carrot on there, and our quick Japanese curry from scratch is done. Japanese curry rice makes for a delicious, comforting meal, and now you can make it on a weeknight, so I hope you'll give this a try. If you enjoyed this video and want to see more like it, let me know by giving this a big thumbs up and by sharing it with all your friends that love Japanese curry. Well, this curry smells kind of amazing, and I'm starving, so I'm gonna have lunch, but I'll catch you in the next one.