I made this Japanese dry curry without roux

3 comments

1. Making Japanese curry without roux blocks involves a few hours of caramelizing and simmering, but “dry” curry (a.k.a. keema curry – キーマカレー) can be put together in under 20 minutes.

   Good Japanese curry always starts with caramelized aromatics, and my hack to speed this up is to puree the onions, garlic, ginger, and carrots. This increases surface area while getting most of the water out of the veggies. Then I add a small amount of baking soda to raise the pH, which breaks down the pectin in the plant material, speeding up both caramelization and Maillard browning reactions. Put simply, this lets you build tons of flavor in about 10 minutes instead of 1 hour.

   My other trick is to use the concept of Kakushiaji (literally “hidden taste”) to add complexity to the curry by adding small amounts of ingredients like cocoa powder, soy sauce, and Worcestershire sauce. These add subtle flavors along with a boatload of umami, making the curry taste like it’s been simmering away for hours.

   You can use these tricks in any curry dish, but if you wanna make this particular one, I have a [recipe](https://norecipes.com/keema-curry-japanese-dry-curry/) and a [video](https://youtu.be/9TaoN6ZOmRo) you can check out for more details.

2. That looks fantastic!

3. That’s one pretty yolk.

   I have to say it’s quite a funny coincidence that I see this post here since I’ve never been to this subreddit before but I actually made your regular Japanese curry recipe just the other day and had no idea you were active on reddit!