2 Easy Curry Recipes: Indian Vs. Japanese

Indian versus Japanese curry. Two chefs, one kitchen, two completely different takes on a beloved comfort food. From bold masala to velvety Japanese roux, each curry brings its own flavor story to the table. By the end, a few Tasty fans will try each curry and share their honest thoughts. Hi, I'm Veronica. I'm a home chef, a Tasty creator, and also from an Indian Fijian family. I'm going to show you my version of an Indian curry. We got work to do, so let's get started. Most Indian curries start off with these bases. Onion, lots of garlic, ginger. This is a Thai chili, and we actually deseeded it, so it's less spicy. Just go ahead and pulse this until it becomes a nice paste. This looks perfect, so we're going to go ahead and put this aside and get blooming to the spices. Now we're going to actually work on the tarka. This part is really just blooming the spices. We're starting with our ghee first, and ghee is pretty much clarified butter, and it actually lasts for a long time. You want to allow it to melt down. So I like to test out my ghee if it's ready now by adding a few cumin seeds, and if it starts to pop, that's when I know it's ready to add the rest of the spices. Okay, it's starting to bubble. I see a little smoke, so I'm going to go ahead and add my spices. First comes the cumin seeds, dry curry leaves, whole cinnamon stick, black peppercorns. Just give it a good mix and allow it to bloom. Now this is where your onion, garlic, and ginger paste comes in. It smells so good in here right now. You're going to cook this down for about maybe one to two minutes. Now we're just going to add our ground spices. Kashmiri chili, coriander, cumin powder, and of course it's not a curry without some turmeric. We're blooming the spices. Not only is your house going to smell good, you're going to smell good, and what you're looking for is a deep red orange. This looks ready right now. This is tomato puree that we're adding, and we're just layering on different flavors. It's going to let this cook for about five minutes or so until the mixture becomes nice and dark and thick and it starts to bubble. You're looking for a nice gravy-like texture. There's different types of curries throughout the Indian diaspora. Northern India might use tomatoes. Southern India may use coconut. I'm Indo-Fijian. Ours sometimes have more of a brothy flavor. Curry is more of a method of cooking. It's not necessarily a recipe. So I personally like to salt my chicken first and get it fully seasoned. I like using dark meat. I just feel it's a little bit more tender and more flavorful, but you could definitely use chicken breast if you like. Now I'm just going to add my chicken in. You just want to go ahead and make sure it's fully coated, and this is ready to add the next step. We're adding coconut milk. I'm an island girl, so I love thick coconut milk. Other regions may use cream, yogurt, or you may skip the cream altogether and just have water so it has more of a brothy flavor. Adding enough water just to cover the top. You want to get this to a steady simmer. I'm going to partially cover and allow this to cook for about 15 to 20 minutes and just go back and stir occasionally just making sure nothing gets stuck to the bottom or anything gets overcooked. Oh wow, this looks so good. Now we're going to add garam masala. Garam means hot. It's a mixture of spices. Garam means hot, but every region has their own different mixture of spices. Some might be a little bit spicier, some might be milder. I don't know what goes in every region flavor, but every region has their own. A pinch of fenugreek is going to go in. We're going to add our lime juice. This looks so good. And that's it for the curry. We're ready to serve. We're just keeping it simple and serving this with rice. Garnish with some cilantro. This looks so good. I can't wait to try this. Although it seems like it's a lot of steps, this is one of those comfort meals that you can make for your family and they'll be thanking you. Hi, I'm Rie. I'm a cookbook author and I'm a content creator. Today I'm making Japanese-style curry. Japanese curry is a little different or a lot different from Indian curry. It's more like soupy. We usually use curry blocks that is pre-made. Today I'm going to show you how to make it from scratch. I wanted to use all the different spice and make my own curry powder mix. I thought it's not realistic for home cooks, so I've decided to just use this curry powder. So first, heat up the pan and I'm going to add in curry powder, coriander, and cumin, and toast until it's fragrant. I like to do this because when I use powder straight up from the jar or tin, it kind of have like a powdery afternoon and I want to eliminate that. It smells nice, so I'm going to remove from the heat and put it in a small bowl. In the same pan, I'm going to melt butter. I'm kind of combining like French technique. First make roux and make my own curry blocks. So butter has melted. I'm going to sprinkle flour, cornstarch. Roux makes Japanese curry has this like livability texture. So if you go to Japanese grocery stores, you will see a bunch of different curry bricks. The origin of Japanese curry started in Japanese navy, inspired by British navy. So it's thickened up and I'm going to add the spice. Cook until everything is combined and kind of look like a wet sand and add honey. I like adding honey because it kind of balancing out with the spice. Looks good and I'm gonna transfer to heatproof container and press. Just like flattening up with rubber spatula. So this amount of curry bricks makes one pot of curry serves about four to six people. You can double or triple and save it for later. Now we're gonna make curry. Add oil, chicken. You just need to sear the chicken. You don't need to cook through and once it has nice brown color, I'm gonna remove the chicken and set aside. And now I'm adding onion and cook until soft. Once onion gets soft, I'm adding ginger and grated garlic. Garlic and ginger is very fragrant. I'm gonna add carrots and potato. Carrot, onion, potato is such a staple for Japanese curry. You are going to add chicken stock. Give a nice stir and put the chicken back in the pot and bay leaf. So the soup basically start boiling. I'm going to lower the heat to medium and put the lid on top and cook for 20 minutes. I'm going to grate apple. This gives a nice sweetness and I think it's go well with curry. Let's see how much we have. So everything is super tender. I'm going to add apple. So this is the curry bricks I made earlier. It is easy to kind of like breaks down and I want to make it like medium pieces and melt in a ladle. Just make sure everything melted because you don't want to have big chunk of curry blocks and we are going to add whole block. I make curry when I don't know what to cook for dinner. Let's cook. If you have this in the refrigerator, it is less than 30 minutes cooking and it's very comforting in any season. So if you like spicy, you can add like cayenne pepper. Simmer for another 10 minutes so apple breaks down. In Japanese we call Worcestershire sauce. Nobody can pronounce this. Salt makes big difference. Start with two teaspoons. You can always add more. This is pretty staple dish. It's definitely a comfort food. I had it for even like school lunch and cook another 10 minutes. So I'm going to cook another 10 minutes to make everything come together and apples to cook down and it's ready. See? Nice and bubbly and you always want to serve with rice. Let's try. It's so good. Let's just hit the spot. This is my version of Japanese curry. You can find this recipe in my cookbook, Make it Japanese. I hope you enjoy. Okay, what's in front of me? Japanese and Indian curry. Okay, I've had Indian curry. I've never had Japanese curry before. They are two different colors and I'm supposed to guess which one's which. This red one I feel like is Japanese. This yellow one feels like Indian. Is that correct? I'm gonna safely assume from my past experience that this is Indian curry and this is Japanese curry. I'm excited to taste these. I'm gonna go for the Japanese one first. It just has like an earthy... It tastes very similar to Indian curry. I think the texture is very different. This one feels a little bit more gelatinous in a way if that makes any sense. It's nice to meet you girl. Let's see this red one. I will say I love the rice. I love that rice when it's all together. Oh wow, this is very different than what I've tasted before. This one is definitely a lot spicier. It has a little bit more of like a lemon acidic taste to it. I taste some lemon, some sort of chili. It's really good. Thank you for sticking around and let us know what you would like us to make next.