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

hey everyone it's kenji uh we're gonna make some japanese curry with chicken um so kare japanese you know probably the national dish of japan one of the most popular dishes in japan home cooking um i grew up eating this we made it at home using uh curry blocks either smb or house or whatever you know they're a few different brands but um today i'm gonna make it from uh using curry powder so not totally from scratch but a little bit more from scratch than than uh just using the curry blocks although the vast majority of japanese people would just use the blocks all right so i'm going to start by sauteing some chicken and making my curry base i'm using clarified butter here because um we currently cannot have any milk protein in the house um or at least in anything that my wife is going to eat uh 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 till it's ready to sear meanwhile i'm going to get some other ingredients ready so curry um it's been around in japan since the uh mid 19th century brought over by british british army or british navy i don't remember the exact history but it was initially used to feed the japanese navy um and so now but then you know then eventually became came over to the mainland become became a very popular dish um and so it's kind of this weird hybrid between um you know it's like it's a british version of indian um 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 um that said it's still good it's delicious um 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 smb brand is like the classic japanese curry powder it's made with like turmeric cloves cardamom fenugreek uh staranese 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 smb and you know any any uh any japanese market super popular and in a in the uh 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 which is a little too hot but i'll let that cool a little bit now we don't have to worry about it burning too much because as i said all of the uh 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're using full butter all right let that chicken sear a little bit then we'll start adding our other ingredients all right 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 where my mother made it as well so kind of chunky slivers like that okay see what chicken's doing so that may seem like quite a bit of butter in there um 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 um the roux the base for our curry so unlike you know an indian curry dish um this one is thickened with a butter and flour roux you can 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 going and add my onion in there now let that go a bit meanwhile i'm going to chop up some ginger and garlic some 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 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 ruins garlic do what suits you okay get our onions and chicken a little stir this is a real quick dish by the way and you know if you have the if you have the curry sauce it's even quicker or the curry uh blocks it's even quicker but even without them just a can of curry paste super quick get some ginger [Music] just a few little slices like that i'm gonna lay them out and then i'm 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 is getting old it's 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 [Music] 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 and we're gonna go right in with our curry paste so that was a few tablespoons of butter so i'm gonna go about maybe two-thirds the amount of curry paste so maybe three tablespoons of grease do a little touch extra and then our flour make sure that tasting get a little nice and toasty okay and then eagle parts flour to uh butter so about four tablespoons total [Music] all right and finally i got chicken stock you can uh 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 uh 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 gonna add a few cups of chicken broth we're gonna test out the uh 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 it to burn on the bottom of the pan so if it looks a little too thick i can add a little bit more uh chicken stock to it or water to thin it out i mean the idea is we want it to look a little a little thinner than we're gonna 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 secret ingredients here sorry all right so we're gonna add a little bit of honey just for some sweetness so you know japanese food tends to be sweet and savory um 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 lens so a couple teaspoons of honey okay 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 controversial ingredient some people enjoy raisins in their japanese curry some people don't um 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 gonna add the rest of that chicken broth and so that will be enough that as the uh potatoes and carrots tenderize and the chicken cooks through the sauce will reduce down to a nice consistency and then we'll season with a little bit more salt and pepper at the end all right so i'm gonna let this come to a simmer cook down yum and i will see you in about 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 bear simmer cover it and let it cook um and then i will see you in 10 minutes or so is it slightly longer no um 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 a season finished seasoning um some people like to put soy sauce but um aside from milk protein we're also doing no soy pure soap soy protein soy protein soy protein soy protein soy soy protein in the house right now um so i'm just gonna use salt the salt a little bit of msg and actually i think i could use a touch more much more honey let's sweeten the deal huh all right let's see where we are there the now 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 um a spoon in japan just a little bit more all right 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 um you can use 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 any 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 gonna say this till tomorrow but i'm gonna well i'm gonna grab some for myself my family will eat the rest tomorrow because uh let's get more sleep right now so do a little rice in the bowl grab a ladle some curry some extra sauce there you go i love the texture those onions get in this dish um all right and then i'm gonna finally finish it off with some sliced chinese chives very classic uh addition to this so you can use scallions for sure if you prefer or if 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 um you can use something like benisha 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 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 m cardamom those are the ingredients in japanese curry powder yeah you want a little bit shallow here let's 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 [Music] you

Channel: J. Kenji López-Alt

Views: 1,695,477

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Id: QhsrBz9Cceg

Length: 17min 34sec (1054 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 01 2022