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Sunday 14 January 2018

Beef Rendang – Hairy Bikers Style

Beef Rendang – Hairy Bikers Style

  • 2 lemongrass stalks
  • 2 red onions, quartered
  • 4 garlic cloves
  • Thumb sized piece of fresh root ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
  • 1 tbsp galangal paste
  • 2 plump red chillies roughly chopped
  • 1 tsp ground cumin
  • 1 tbsp ground coriander
  • 1 tsp tumeric
  • 1 tbsp soft brown sugar
  • 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
  • 5 curry leaves
  • 1 cinnamon stick
  • 1 tin coconut milk
  • 200ml water
  • 1 tsp tamarind paste
  • 2 tbsp vegetable oil
  • 1 kilo beef steak cut into bite sized chunks (stewing or braising)
  • Big pinch of sea salt


Method:
Peel off the dry outer layers of each lemongrass stalk and slice the inner white part into 1cm pieces.  Place them into a food processor, add the onions, garlic, ginger, galangal and chillies and blend to make as fine a paste as possible.  You will need to push the mixture down a good few times to ensure everything gets a good blitz, word of caution, don’t breath in deeply when doing this as the fragrance will knock you for six!
Heat the vegetable oil in a large flameproof casserole dish and fry the onion paste gently for around 5 minutes, stirring constantly.  Add the cumin, coriander and turmeric, mix well and cook for a further 2 minutes.

Add the beef to the casserole dish and toss it with the onion paste and spices.  Cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly until the meat is lightly coloured all over.  Pour in the coconut milk, add the water, curry leaves, cinnamon stick, sugar, tamarind paste, soy sauce and salt.  Place a lid on the casserole dish and cook in a preheated over at 160 degrees for around 3 hours or until the meat is very tender, you will need to give a good stir on the hour and also just to check it isn’t drying out.  

By the end of the cooking process you should be left with a thick, rich sauce.

It is best to make the curry the day before you eat it as the flavours will enhance the dish even more.  If you are a spice fiend then add as much fresh chilli as you can take, I did find the two chillies (including the seeds) gave this quite a good kick of heat. 

  I served this with basmati rice, cucumber and mint raita, and a tomato, onion and coriander chutney with some poppadoms.
Whilst it may seem like a lot of ingredients most of the dry ingredients people will have in their store cupboard and any additional ingredients required shouldn’t work out too costly and will keep in the fridge for a while once opened.

We both loved this dish, perfect for the weekend and with enough leftover for another dish I will be making later in the week,, watch this space for an Italian dish with an Indian twist!
Recipe adapted from The Hairy Bikers – Great Curries

5 comments:

  1. My favourite Indonesian meal ... spicy sublime !

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  2. Absolutely beautiful! Will be making again

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  3. Have made this on quite a few occasions. Absolutely lovely

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  4. Added 2 tbsp of toasted dessicated coconut....dreamy!!

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