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Tavern Maiden's Japanese Curry - DnD Fantasy Inspired Cooking

This warm and flavorful curry is loaded with beef, potatoes, veggies, spices, and even some apple!
Course Main Course
Cuisine Japanese
Keyword apple, beef, curry, garlic, mushrooms, onions, potatoes, rice, spicy, steak, stew, wine
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 3 hours
Total Time 3 hours 15 minutes
Servings 8 adventurers
Calories 450kcal
Author TheEverhearthInn
Cost 25 gold

Equipment

  • Large cooking pot with a well-sealing lid

Ingredients

Curry Powder

  • 1 tbsp turmeric
  • 1 tsp paprika
  • ½ tsp allspice
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 tbsp coriander
  • 1 tsp cloves
  • ½ tsp fennel
  • ½ tsp nutmeg
  • 1 tsp cardamom
  • 1 tsp cinnamon we used ceylon cinnamon for its minor health benefits
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • ½ tsp white pepper black works too
  • ½ tsp cayenne pepper
  • ½ tsp ginger powder
  • dried red pepper we used two takano tsume peppers

Curry Stew

  • 2 onions sliced thin
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 tbsp butter
  • 1 russet potato peeled and diced
  • 1 carrot chopped
  • 2 stalks celery ends removed, chopped
  • 6 white mushrooms cleaned and sliced
  • 1 tsp grated ginger
  • 2 cloves minced garlic
  • 1¼ lb boneless beef chuck roast cut into 1½ inch cubes
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • ¼ tsp black pepper
  • 1 tbsp flour
  • ½ cup red wine
  • ½ tbsp curry powder use our recipe above, or store-bought
  • 1 tbsp ketchup
  • 4 cups beef broth we used Better Than Bouillon
  • ⅛ red apple
  • 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
  • 2 tbsp coconut milk
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 box Japanese curry roux we used 8 cubes of Golden Curry
  • cooked white rice for serving

Instructions

  • If you're making the curry powder, toast the bay leaf, hot peppers, and fennel (if not ground) in a pan over low heat for 1-2 minutes. Then grind all the spices to make a fine powder and mix the toasted spices with the rest of the curry powder ingredients. Store in a glass jar for 2 months.
  • Preheat your large cooking pot over medium heat. Add half the butter and oil, then the onions, and thoroughly coat the onions in the oil. Sauté the onions for 25 minutes until they just begin to caramelize, stirring every few minutes. Move onto the following steps while the onions cook. Once the onions finish turn off their heat.
  • Put your potatoes into a bowl of water to get the starch out of them.
  • Sprinkle the beef with salt and pepper, then the flour.
  • Preheat a second large pan over medium-high heat then add the remaining oil and butter. Fry the beef in separate batches ensuring they have some space in between every piece. Fry for about 3 minutes on each side, getting a nice brown crust on every side. Remove all the beef and place in a separate dish.
  • Pour the wine into the beef pan and use a wooden spatula to deglaze the crusted bits from the pan. Turn off the heat and set aside, keeping the wine and bits in the pan.
  • Get the large pot with the onions back up to medium heat and add the garlic, ginger, ketchup, and ½ tbsp of curry powder. Cook for 1 minute, stirring.
  • Add the beef and deglazed wine sauce into the pot and stir, cook for 3 minutes.
  • Add the mushrooms, carrots, and celery and mix. Then add the beef broth until it just covers the ingredients in the pot. Now cover the pot with a well-fitting lid and bring to a boil.
  • Skim off the bubbly scum from the top, we just used a spoon with shallow dips into the liquid.
  • Now grate the apple piece into the pot, and add the Worcestershire, coconut milk, and bay leaf. Cover the pot again and simmer on low for 2 hours.
  • Add the potatoes, close the lid, and simmer for another 15 minutes. The potatoes should be easy to stab with a fork or toothpick when done.
  • Remove the pot from heat and remove the bay leaf. Gradually add the curry roux cubes. We introduced them 2 cubes at a time, making sure to thouroughly stir in between each batch. Stir for a few minutes and see how thick the sauce is. Add some hot water to achieve your desired thickness. We added about half a cup.
  • Serve over some white rice to hungry DnD adventurers! Grant them a +1 to their Strength checks for the session to reflect this hearty meal!

Notes

This curry turned out so hearty and delicious. We are huge curry fans and this recipe was a bit of a higher effort take on our otherwise very easy typical curry night, but it really did pay off. Especially in the beef, which came out with a nice roasted crust but was still incredibly tender. This is definitely one of those recipes that takes a while the first time you make it but is considerably faster the second time you make it, and we definitely aim to try this again and experiment with more flavors. When we do this again we'll likely try adding more coconut milk and apple to see how those sweet flavors come out! This recipe is great to make for your Dungeons and Dragons or tabletop role playing game party as it serves a large number of adventurers!