Hi, Ray here again.
The weekend is here again and it’s time for another curry from the great range on the Curry Focus website.
I haven’t made a beef curry for a while so I went for the Beef and Onion Curry.
One of the main reasons for chosing this recipe was that there are so few ingredients which appeals to my minimal cooking effort regime.
The only spicy ingredient was the dried chillis.
This beef curry takes over 2 hours to cook, with the beef taking over 90 minutes. I’ve found that it is common for beef to take a while to cook and this generally results in a very tender beef curry.
I soaked the dried chillis and then cooked half of the onions so that they were well browned.
One thing that I noticed was that a lot of oil was used in this recipe. Onions soak up oil but not a full 10 tablespoons.
Plenty of oil was left over once I’d taken out the cooked onions.
I had made the chilli paste whilst the onions were cooking and quickly cooked the paste for the required 30 seconds before adding the remaining onion to cook.
After the onion was cooked, I added the beef, cinnamon, lemon juice, sugar, lemon grass and water and mixed everything up well. Then I covered the frying pan and simmered the curry for 90 minutes.
I started the rice when the beef had been simmering for 90 minutes and removed the frying pan lid so that the liquid in the curry would reduce.
Some of the liquid disappeared but I thought that there would be too much left in the curry. However, the browned onion thickened up the sauce very nicely. The curry wasn’t dry but wasn’t runny either.
I removed the lemon grass and cinnamon and served up the curry on the rice.
The curry was quickly eaten by the four diners. There was a slight hint of sweetness with a great taste of cameralized onion. The beef was lovely and tender.
The curry was rated an excellent 7.5 out of 10 with a spice/heat rating of mild.
This curry provoked a heated argument as to what exactly makes a curry, purely and simply because there was only one spicy ingredient (the dried chillis). One person was convinced that it wasn’t a curry because there was no curry powder or garam masala. Another one argued that it was the taste that made a curry and this was a curry because of the taste. Another joined in and said that they had eaten lots of curries that didn’t have curry powder or garam masala. The argument raged for a few heated minutes but was soon abandoned when dessert of strawberries and ice cream arrived.
Whatever makes a curry, I thoroughly enjoyed this dish. If you like a mild curry that is easy to cook then I recommend that you try this Beef and Onion Curry. You won’t regret it.