Writer, Agilist, Elder Geek
As I mentioned, the thing with Japanese Curry is everyone has their own recipe if they’re really into it.
Japanese curry has regional variants, home variants, company variants, and restaurant variants. If Curry is important, someone has their own specific versions.
Let’s be brutally honest here: there is no “one Japanese curry recipe.” There’s historical recipes. There’s common recipes. There’s also the fact that everyone who is a fancier, every restaurant, every region of Japan, has their own recipe or recipes. Curry is a phenomena there, one comprable to mania for chili or barbecue in America.
The very basic japanese curry is a fat or oil, flour, and curry powder mixed into a roux, at times with some other things. Then broth is added (often from vegetables and meat being prepared at the same time). The roux is mixed into the broth, and oftentimes returned to the pot the other ingredients are in so it cooks together.
Now as my goal is to make a curry sauce that can be made and used any time (without preparing other ingredients), and make it low-fat/low sodium, my quest was a bit different. With some digging and comparing, I was able to make a “composite” basic Japanese curry recipe below.
I love Japanese Curry.
Japanese Curry done right is something special. It’s a thick, sweeter, almost gravy-like curry that goes great on just about everything. It’s very popular in Japan, a signature dish in the Japanese Navy, and it seems there’s an ever-growing amount of specialty curries coming from the land of the Rising Sun.
I say good. More curries.
You’ve probably seen the roux blocks in stores or had a good Japanese curry at some point in your life. It’s everywhere. It’s incredibly popular in Japan, both at home and eating out.
Of course, again, the best part is you can toss it on rice-plus-something and have a delicious one-dish meal. It’s the sauce that makes everything special – and a good sauce makes it amazing.
However, I’m not exactly thrilled with a lot of the options. The Curry Roux blocks that you get in stores are loaded with sodium (even if they’re so delicious). Some recipes themselves are a bit fatty as well, or involved some timed preparations. Curry Roux can leave a bit of a gritty taste depending on brand. Also I’m a freeze-and-eat kind of guy so I couldn’t find anything fitting someone like myself who wants to freeze the curry so I can serve it any time – usually you make it with whatever you’re going to cover with the sauce.
So I decided to make my own recipe.
I plan to document it here as “Curry Diary” so I can share my wisdom, my knowledge, my experience my tears, and I dunno, whatever happens when a guy tries to make homemade Japanese Curry.
Now on a serious note, this actually embodies an important principle of good cooking: owning a recipe. Really good cooking comes from doing something until you get it right (read: you like it). That teaches you a lot, that personalizes the recipe, and that makes sharing it all the more powerful.
I’ve been doing this for awhile, so the next few posts are going to catch you up . . .
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.