Japanese Curry (Kare Raisu) | Kenji's Cooking Show

Hey everyone, it's Kenji. We're going to make some Japanese curry with chicken. So, curry. Japanese, you know, probably the national dish of Japan. One of the most popular dishes in Japan. Home cooking. I grew up eating this. We made it at home using curry blocks, either SMB or House or whatever, you know, there are a few different brands. But today I'm going to make it from using curry powder. So not totally from scratch, but a little bit more from scratch than just using the curry blocks. Although the vast majority of Japanese people would just use the blocks. Alright, so I'm going to start by sautéing some chicken and making my curry base. I'm using clarified butter here because we currently cannot have any milk protein in the house. Or at least in anything that my wife is going to eat. So clarified butter is just the butter fat, none of the protein, none of the water. But you can of course use whole butter. That's a few tablespoons of butter right there. We're going to heat it up until it's ready to sear. Meanwhile, I'm going to get some other ingredients ready. So curry, it's been around in Japan since the mid-19th century. Brought over by the British Army or British Navy. I don't remember the exact history, but it was initially used to feed the Japanese Navy. And so now, but then you know, eventually came over to the mainland, became a very popular dish. And so it's kind of this weird hybrid between, you know, it's like it's a British version of Indian food. So, you know, it's British curry, but translated through a Japanese lens as well. So in Japan, it's actually considered, you know, Western food, even though it originates in India, but it's a long way from any kind of actual Indian food. That said, it's still good. It's delicious. So that's the reason why you see these British ingredients like potatoes and onions and carrots in this dish and why it's made with curry powder. So Japanese curry powder, S&B brand is like the classic Japanese curry powder. It's made with like turmeric, cloves, cardamom, fenugreek, star anise, cumin, probably. I'm not sure of all the ingredients in there, but there's a sort of distinct flavor. If you can't find Japanese curry powder, you can use something like a, you know, like a canned madras curry powder, some kind of British, British curry powder. And that'll work just fine for this. But of course you can probably find S&B and, you know, any, any, any Japanese market, super popular and in a, in the international section of many supermarkets as well. All right. So I've got a Yukon gold potato, a carrot I'm chopping up. I'm making like four, four-ish portions right now. Our butter is hot. So my chicken is going to go in. This is diced chicken breast. Actually, it's a little too hot, but I'll let that cool a little bit. We don't have to worry about it burning too much because as I said, all of the, all the milk solids are out of there. So even if it gets a little brown, you're not going to get a terrible sort of burnt butter flavor that you would get if you were using full butter. We'll let that chicken sear a little bit and then we'll start adding our other ingredients. Potatoes and carrots. I'm gonna use about half an onion for this. And for this onion, I'm going to do, I like having kind of chunky slivers of onion, which is how my, my grandmother made this dish, or my mother made it as well. So kind of chunky slivers like that. Okay, chicken's doing. So that may seem like quite a bit of butter in there. And it is, but we're using more butter than we need to sear the chicken because we're going to use that butter to make the roux, the base for our curry. So unlike, you know, an Indian curry dish, this one is thickened with a butter and flour roux. You could also use oil and flour if you want. Some salt, some white pepper. You can use black pepper. All right, so that chicken's going for a bit. I'm going to add my onion in there now. Let that go a bit. Meanwhile, I'm going to chop up some ginger and garlic. So garlic, cut off the ends, give it a little smash. The peel should come right off. It is the easiest way I know to peel garlic, easier than the whole bowl shaking thing. All right, then a nice big smash. You can also feel free to use a garlic press. I would just avoid using pre-minced garlic. Although if you like pre-minced garlic, do what suits you. Okay, onions and chicken, a little stir. This is a real quick dish, by the way. And you know, if you have the curry sauce, it's even quicker, or the curry blocks, it's even quicker. But even without them, just a can of curry paste, super quick. Get some ginger, just a few little slices like that. I'm going to lay them out and then give them a good smash. Take off any skins. I'm leaving, I don't really mind having little bits of ginger skin because this is pretty tender young ginger. But any sort of big piece of skin, you can discard like that. Hi Shabu. Shabu's getting old. It's night right now, so the kids are asleep. So the other dog, I know people often ask me, if they don't see one of the dogs in the video, they ask if the dog's okay. The other dog is fine. He's asleep in my daughter's room right now, which is, he comes in every night at story time and then stays there for the rest of the night. All right. Garlic and ginger in. A little saute. So we're just looking to gently soften the onions for that onion and ginger to get a, garlic and ginger to get a little fragrant. Then we're going to go right in with our curry paste. So that was a few tablespoons of butter. So I'm going to go about maybe two thirds the amount of curry paste. So maybe three tablespoons of curry paste. We'll do a little touch extra. And then our flour. So that paste can get a little nice and toasty. And then equal parts flour to butter. So about four tablespoons total. All right. And finally I got chicken stock. You can, this is homemade, but you can of course use a store bought, or if you don't have that, you can use water and just, you know, add some chicken bouillon or leave the chicken flavor out completely if you want. That's fine too. So we're just looking to very lightly toast this roux just so that no raw flour flavor really remains. Okay. And then we're going to add a few cups of chicken broth. We're going to test out the Chef John hot roux, cold liquid, no lumps method. And I think we'll be just fine. And finally we'll add back in carrots and potatoes. And that's that. We're going to let this come to a simmer. It'll thicken up. If it looks a little too thick, I don't want this to burn on the bottom of the pan. So if it looks a little too thick, I can add a little bit more chicken stock to it or water to thin it out. And the idea is we want it to look a little, little thinner than we're going to serve it because as this stuff cooks down, obviously the sauce, as the vegetables soften, the sauce is also going to reduce and thicken. Oh, we're forgetting a couple of secret ingredients here. Sorry. All right. So we're going to add a little bit of honey just for some sweetness. So, you know, Japanese food tends to be sweet and savory. So Japanese curry is not usually very spicy. It can be, but it's usually not. It's usually more of a sort of sweet and savory blend. So a couple of teaspoons of honey. And then the way my grandmother and my mother always did it is adding some raisins to there as well. This is a sort of controversial ingredient. Some people enjoy raisins in their Japanese curry. Some people don't. You could also do apple chunks. Some people like apple chunks. My sister probably does. She's weird like that. Okay. Let's mix all that in. It's looking a little thick to me right now. So I'm just going to add the rest of that chicken broth. And so that will be enough that as the potatoes and carrots tenderize and the chicken cooks through, the sauce will reduce down to a nice consistency. And then we'll season it with a little bit more salt and pepper at the end. All right. So I'm going to let this come to a simmer, cook down. Yum. And I will see you in about 30 seconds because I wanted to show you once it comes to a simmer over high heat, I'm going to reduce this down to maintain a real bare simmer, cover it, and let it cook. And then I will see you in 10 minutes or so. It's slightly longer. So let's see if everything's done. I think it should be. Let's try a potato. Yep. We're looking for like tender but not falling apart. All right. So now at this point, we just got to season, finish seasoning. Some people like to put soy sauce, but aside from milk protein, we're also doing no soy protein in the house right now. So I'm just going to use salt, a little bit of MSG. And actually I think I could use a touch more honey. Let's sweeten the deal, huh? All right. Let's see where we are there now. Texture is looking good. Reduced down a little bit. Looks sort of saucy but not soupy and not gloppy, which is how you like it because you want enough sauce to get in with that rice. This is one of those dishes that you eat with a spoon in Japan. Just a little bit more. All right. And I think we're about done. Oh, you know what I'm going to add to here? It's because everybody in my family likes them. We're going to do some frozen peas. You can, you know, there's lots of different vegetables you can do in here. So if you like sweet potatoes, go for it. If you like little pearl onions, go for it. Anything really that would fit into a sort of stew, like a Western style stew, you can put into here. Rutabaga, if you know what a rutabaga is. All right. Very good. I'm going to save this till tomorrow, but I'm going to, well, I'm going to grab some for myself. My family will eat the rest tomorrow because they're asleep right now. So do a little rice in the bowl and grab a ladle, some curry, some extra sauce. I love the texture those onions get in this dish. All right. And then I'm going to finally finish it off with some sliced Chinese chives. Very classic addition to this. So you can use scallions for sure, if you prefer, or you can't find Chinese chives. I just happen to have like a huge bunch of these right now. Chinese chives and some pickles. This is pickled eggplant. You can use something like beni shoga, you know, like the red pickled ginger, if you don't have pickled eggplant or pickled daikon is very common, but some kind of pickles always go with rice and curry. All right. Give it a try. Sweet, savory, just a little spicy. Oh, I realized this jar tells you the exact ingredients. Turmeric, coriander, fenugreek, cumin, orange peel, pepper, chili pepper, cinnamon, fennel, ginger, star anise, thyme, bay leaves, cloves, nutmeg, sage, and cardamom. Those are the ingredients in Japanese curry powder. Hey, you want a little bit, shall we here? I'll do a little, little piece of chicken. Sit. Off the nose. Good girl. All right. Guys, gals, non-binary pals, Japanese curry rice. I will see you next time. Bye-bye.