Curry beef stew is a meal prep friendly recipe that goes very well with rice. Add plenty of vegetables to make this an extra hearty and filling meal.

Time: 4/5
Put in the hours, or enjoy your tough beef. Your call.

Effort: 3/5
There’s a lot of down time, so there’s no rush and you can prep as you go

One Pot Wonder, Almost

Curries, like many other stews, are a good way to make a lot of food at once. The bigger your pot, the larger your batch size, and it takes about the same amount of effort to cook for one or for many. That makes curries a very meal prep friendly recipe, like beef and lentil chili, bolognese with rice, Hungarian goulash, and Beef Cheek Stew.

Cooking curry means that you end up with a lot of heavily spiced gravy, which is best enjoyed with a starchy side dish to act as a platform for the rich flavours to perform. Rice just so happens to be perfectly suited to play such a role, and you all know how I feel about rice around here.

Japanese curries differ from other curries in that they tend to be sweeter and more acidic. Some online recipes that make it from scratch call for fruit, like apples. However, I’m perfectly content to take a massive shortcut and just use store bought curry roux cubes. I happened to get S&B Golden Curry (not sponsored, it’s just what the store had), which is a pretty popular brand and you should have no problem finding it or something else like it anywhere in the world.

I’ve tried making Japanese curry from scratch, and after having done it both ways I can tell you that you don’t get much out of doing it yourself other than a lot more sweat and tears for something that doesn’t taste as good. But maybe some people are into that. You do you.

A remark before I proceed to the step by step pictures: Do as I say, not as I do. I thought I would be a smart-ass and do everything in the big wok where I’ll be combining everything at the end, until I realised that onions taste much better if they’re sautéed before they’re stewed. So I ended up transferring everything to a pot to free up my pan. Save yourself the trouble, and simmer your beef in a separate pot.

Dramatis Personae

Beef – I made 6 portions with 2lbs

I had rib fingers, but any cut that you would use for stews like short ribs or chuck roast would work well. The key is choosing a cut with plenty of connective tissue, which will break down into gelatine to give the sauce a rich, luscious texture.

Vegetables

Always eat your veggies!

Even though potatoes seem like redundant carbs when I’m serving curry with rice, they are delightfully flavourful after simmering in the curry sauce. I went with half a small potato per portion.

Carrots are just nice in stews generally, and onions are nice for sweetness and aroma. I used one of each for six portions.

Besides vegetables in the stew, I also blanched a head of broccoli to serve on the side. The richness of the curry can become overwhelming, so it’s nice to have something light and fresh to prevent palate fatigue. The cherry tomatoes serve the same purpose, in addition to adding some visual contrast- and never forget, pretty food tastes better.

Curry roux cubes

They’re widely available, but if you insist on making it yourself then Just One Cookbook has an excellent guide. I also once made a poor man’s version of Japanese curry following a Youtube recipe which approximated the flavour with curry powder, tomato paste and Worcestershire sauce.

Executive summary

1. Briefly blanche beef in boiling water. Discard water from the blanche, bring fresh water to a boil and simmer the beef covered until tender, or about 2 hours.
2. While waiting for the beef to simmer, make rice. Wash and cut vegetables.
3. When beef is almost tender, sauté onions and carrots in a big pan. Add potatoes, beef and simmering liquid to pan and bring everything to a simmer again for a few minutes.
4. Add curry roux cubes according to package instructions, and mix to combine. Let everything stew in the curry sauce for a while, until potatoes are cooked through.
5. If desired, cook vegetables separately when waiting for potatoes to be done.
6. Plate up and serve.

Play by Play

Last things first. These 2lbs of beef rib fingers have been deforsting overnight, and they’re ready to be turned into dinner.

The first blanche. All I’m aiming to do is to cook out the crud from the meat. I know I’m almost done when I can’t see any pink. Discard the blanching water and start anew. Here’s where I tell you to do as I say and not as I do: I would have saved myself some trouble if I did this in a pot rather than the final pan in which I’ll be mixing everything.

I went ahead and got rice going while the beef simmered, and got some cleaning done. At about the 1.5 hour mark. I skimmed off whatever grease I can at this point, because beef rib fingers are plenty rich and I don’t need that going to my waistline.

Vegetables … transform! If you scrub the potatoes well you could leave the skins on, which gives you plenty of fiber and other good stuff.

The instructions for the curry roux cubes say that one of these packets are good for 6 portions, so that’s about right.

Here’s where I realised I need the big wok for the final mixing, so I transferred the beef to another pot after skimming off the fat. Sauté onions and carrots until tender (bonus points if you used some of the beef fat) then add everything back in.

Don’t be a dummy like me and break the roux cubes up, you’ll have a much easier time stirring them in. The smaller you cut your potato cubes, the less time they’ll take to cook through.

While waiting for everything to stew in the curry sauce, I blanched some broccoli on the side. It’s nice to have something that doesn’t taste like beef and curry in a meal, sort of like a palate cleanser.

And we’re done! Time to plate up.

Itadakimasu~! Check out how glossy the curry roux cubes make everything look! The cherry tomatoes also kinda makes the rice look like Kermit the Frog, but maybe that’s just me.

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