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Recipe: Homemade Japanese curry

We had a soup and stew cookoff at our place last night. It went well. Japanese curry is one of my old standbys, but the accepted way of making that dish is to just open a box and go at it. I’ve been altering my own curry a lot compared to the box’s instructions over the years, and when I (finally) found this recipe for a homemade version of the same curry I couldn’t help but make similar modifications.

In the end I only really followed its instructions on how to make the roux, but the linked recipe is excellent. Here are the alterations which I attempted and recommend:

• My Japanese curry cooks as a beef and carrot stew for a few hours, with the roux being added in near the end to minimize burn potential. You don’t have to cook chicken as long to get it tender, but then your stew won’t end up with the delicious flavor you get from stewing beef.
• No potatoes. The only vegetables/fruit in here are orange carrots, yellow onions, and pineapple.
• Sear the beef in butter on all sides before tossing it into the stew pot. This maximizes tastiness and keeps it from getting chewy in there.
• For the roux: less ketchup, more tonkatsu sauce. That stuff’s delicious and does a lot to make this a unique, kind of fruity tasting curry vs. a creamy garam masala stew. I’d recommend skipping ketchup entirely and doubling the tonkatsu sauce, if possible.
• I use yellow onions. Cut the onions very thinly, cooking them in a bit of butter at medium heat. Add a can of crushed pineapple once they’ve gotten started caramelizing, adding water as necessary afterward. Toss them into the stew once it’s gotten a bit mushy looking. I’ve found that letting the curry cool down and reheat once you’ve added the roux improves the texture massively. My goal is to make the onions “dissolve” into the curry. Blending seems to make onions taste horrible; I’ve not figured out why, but it sort of makes sense.
• I double or triple the cayenne. Obviously should be altered for your own taste, but I’ve found that very few people have trouble with the spice, especially since this dish is served on rice.
• Make enough for leftovers. This only gets better after fridging/reheating.