In the early years of this century, not long after I ate my first “sushi” (M&S vegetarian selection, since you ask), I tried my first katsu curry at a cool London noodle bar, with my cool new university friends, one of whom had been banging on about this Wagamama place since freshers’ week. You could have knocked me down with a feather when I found that the thick, brown gravy dolloped over neat slices of breaded chicken reminded me of nothing more than good old chip shop curry sauce.
Of course, I didn’t mention this at the time, for fear of ridicule – it wasn’t until many years later that I found out this was no mere coincidence. As Japanese chef and author Hiroko Shimbo explains, “Indian curry came to Japan from England”, via the Royal Navy, when the country first opened up to foreign trade in the second half of the 19th century. After adoption by the Japanese armed forces, it became more widely popular as an example of yōshoku, or western food.
If you’d prefer to keep the dish plant-based, meanwhile, vegetarian dashi is probably a better bet than a herb-heavy vegetable stock. These days, kare raisu is regarded as “exemplary comfort food”, Japanese food writer Namiko Hirasawa Chen says, and a stalwart of cafeterias and institutional catering, as well as being “one of the most-loved home-cooked dishes in Japan”: the New York Times’ Sam Sifton describes it as “Japan’s chilli, its bacon cheeseburger, its meatloaf and gravy all in one, a hangover-killing man-meal found in bars and restaurants up and down the country narrow, never as good as Mom’s”. Thicker and sweeter than the south Asian original, it is, like naporitan spaghetti or cream stew, both recognisably imported and distinctively, unapologetically Japanese. It’s also incredibly delicious.
The protein
In many ways, this is the least important element of the curry rice story: according to Emiko Davies’ book Gohan, “There are as many different recipes for Japanese curry as there are cooks who make it, not to mention regional versions from venison curry in Hokkaido to oyster curry in Hiroshima and bitter melon curry in Okinawa.” Hirasawa Chen notes that the “most basic one uses chicken”, and she, like Daniel Gritzer of Serious Eats, calls for boneless, skinless thighs, though you could, I imagine, use breast. That said, we find the pork loin Davies gives as a suggestion a bit dry; Nancy Singleton Hachisu notes in her book Japan that “the cut of meat used in curry rice is komagiri, thinly cut pork from the shoulder area with some fat on the edge”, which would perhaps fare better. In short, use any meat that will cook through relatively quickly, but isn’t too lean (or add it ready cooked).
Alternatively, however, you might, like chef Tim Anderson, prefer to stick with vegetables (firm tofu would be another good bet), or go all in and make this the katsu curry you also may or may not have first encountered in Camden in the early noughties, involving a breaded and deep-fried cutlet of either chicken (chikinkatsu) or pork (tonkatsu). We all love the way chef and writer Luiz Hara marinates his chicken in soy sauce and garlic before frying, though most of my testers find it easier to eat it without the skin, which is probably sacrilege. To be honest, I prefer the meat in the curry, rather than as a separate dish, but I’ve given directions for both below.
The spices
“I love creating my own homemade versions of ingredients,” Hara writes in his book The Japanese Larder, “but Japanese curry roux really breaks the mould – try as I might, the flavour of homemade curry roux was never quite the same as the shop-bought tablets.” Shimbo, however, tells the New York Times that she prefers to make her sauce from scratch on the basis that “the cubes are all chemicals”.
Look at the ingredients in the cubes (which I find in the Asian section of my not-very-large local supermarket), and you’ll see that, along with some things you might prefer to avoid (including, in the case of the brand I buy, palm oil and various E numbers), they’re generally made up of a starchy thickener (wheat flour and fat) and curry powder, plus other flavour enhancers such as monosodium glutamate. While these things are fine and dandy, unless you have a sentimental attachment to the things, it doesn’t take much longer to make a roux yourself and add curry powder, or indeed your own blend of spices, if you really want to get into the customisation game.
Only Gritzer starts from scratch, after a Damascene moment in a Tokyo cafe showed him “how much of a range of flavour is possible in Japanese curry without betraying the essence of the dish”. Fired up by “an entirely different Japanese curry from ones I’d had before: darker, more bitter and spicier, without the sweet and soft easiness of so many others”, he decided to “make my own … calibrating the spices exactly as I wanted them and deepening the flavour as much as I pleased”.
Gritzer he decides to tailor the flavour profile to his own taste, rather than reverse engineer the S&B curry powder. (According to my pot, this contains 17 spices, herbs and aromatics, which are, presumably listed in order of quantity: turmeric, coriander, fenugreek, cumin, orange peel, pepper, chilli, cinnamon, fennel, ginger, star anise, thyme, bay, cloves, nutmeg, sage and cardamom). Gritzer opts to “punch up the cumin for more funk, add significantly more black pepper for warm heat, and include a more generous dose of chilli pepper for more robust spice”.
Though I do make my own slightly warmer blend, as detailed below, I think that, like Hara, as for most of us, Japanese curry is synonymous with the taste of curry powder – otherwise it would be like trying to make coronation chicken. If you’re not a fan, by all means feel free to play around with the formula below, but otherwise rest assured you won’t go far wrong with a Japanese brand (indeed, you can even use madras curry powder, as in Anderson’s book Japaneasy, though that will give a slightly different flavour profile).
The sauce
The main event is the curry sauce – though in many ways it’s more like a gravy thickened with a roux. That’s something often credited to a direct French influence but, given the French influence on European cooking in the 18th century, many early British curry recipes involve one, too). The roux is usually cooked to a deep, rich brown, adding a nutty, slightly bitter note to proceedings.
Hirasawa Chen explains on her blog Just One Cookbook that her “mom always adds some grated apples and different condiments to the curry. She says: ‘If you use just the boxed curry roux, your curry will always taste the same. It will be no different from your neighbour’s curry’”. Helpfully, she supplies a list of suggestions to add sweetness, sourness, spice, perfume and savoury depth, according to preference. Many of these are covered in the recipes I try, from Anderson’s banana, apple and ketchup (sweet) or Davies and Singleton Hachisu’s mirin (also sweet) to Davies’ dark chocolate (depth) and the soy sauce, ginger and garlic in almost every recipe (more depth). She makes this tweaking and fine-tuning sound great fun, and I strongly encourage you to read her post and experiment accordingly; the version below is just my idea of a great curry.
One possibility Chen doesn’t mention, however, is Shimbo’s use of pork mince to start her roux, which gives it a delicious, meaty richnes. I’ve not included it here, because my aim is to make a recipe that’s as versatile as possible for all dietary requirements, but if you’re a meat eater, it’s very much worth a try – I reckon fatty beef or lamb mince would surely work just as well.
Hara’s is the only recipe diluted with water, rather than stock, presumably because the curry roux cubes are fairly salty already. Chicken or dashi, an umami-packed infusion of dried kelp and fermented and smoked tuna flakes are the most common choices, with Gritzer using both. As no one seems to be able to pick up the flavour of the dashi, I’ve stuck with the easier-to-source chicken stock, but either will do fine – Japanese chain Coco Ichibanya is rumoured to use beef stock. If you’d prefer to keep the dish plant-based, meanwhile, vegetarian dashi is probably a better bet than a herb-heavy vegetable stock. It’s available to buy, or try making your own using dried seaweed and mushrooms.
The vegetables
Largely up to you. Onions (baby ones, in Hara’s case), carrots and potatoes are popular, and the latter are said to be helpful for thickening the sauce, though I favour a waxier variety that will keep its shape during cooking. Hara adds courgette, Davies mushrooms, Anderson cauliflower and Gritzer peas. Whatever you go for, the main thing is to cut it into pieces that will cook through in good time, and add more delicate items such as peas only towards the end of cooking.
To serve
Rice, preferably plump short-grain, is the ideal partner for soaking up all that delicious sauce, while a garnish of pickled ginger adds both colour and zing. If you find the sea of beige troubling, you could also pop a few of Hara’s blanched mangetout on top – but really, if brown food is good enough for Nigella …
Perfect Japanese curry rice
Prep 35 min
Cook 30 min
Serves 4
6 boneless, skinless chicken thighs (optional)
1 tbsp oil (if cooking the chicken in the curry)
3 tbsp butter (or oil for vegans)
1 tbsp cornflour, or potato starch
1 tbsp Japanese curry powder
600ml chicken stock or dashi (or vegetarian dashi)
200g potatoes, preferably waxy, peeled and chopped into cubes
1 large carrot, peeled and chopped into cubes
1 medium courgette, or another vegetable of your choice, chopped into cubes
2 tsp dark soy sauce
2 tbsp mango chutney
Cooked short-grain rice and pickled ginger, to serve
For the paste
1 onion, peeled and roughly chopped
4cm piece root ginger, peeled
2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
1 green apple, peeled, cored and chopped
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce, or vegan equivalent
For the katsu (optional)
2 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed
Neutral oil, for frying
1 egg, beaten
50g cornflour, or potato starch
75g panko breadcrumbs
First make the paste. Put the onion, ginger, garlic, apple, tomato puree and Worcestershire sauce in a food processor and whizz to a paste.
If making katsu curry, bash out the chicken to an even thickness, then set aside and marinate in the soy and garlic.
Otherwise, cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces and put the oil in a large saucepan on a medium-high heat. Fry the chicken pieces until golden, then set aside, keeping the pan for the next step.
Melt the butter in a large saucepan, then stir in the cornflour and fry to a dark golden brown. Add the curry powder and cook, stirring, for a minute.
Add the paste, fry for a couple of minutes, then whisk in the stock.
Add the potatoes, carrots and fried chicken pieces (if you’re not making katsu, that is), bring to a simmer and cook gently for about 25 minutes, until tender; after 18 minutes, add the courgettes to the mix. Stir the soy sauce and chutney into the sauce and season to taste.
If making katsu, heat a fryer or a large, deep pan a third full of neutral oil to 160C. Put the egg, flour and breadcrumbs in three separate bowls.
Drag the bashed-out chicken through the cornflour to coat, dip it in the egg, shaking off any excess, then roll in the breadcrumbs to cover.
Fry for about eight minutes, turning once, until golden brown and cooked through, then drain on kitchen paper. Season and slice.
Divide the rice and katsu, if making, between plates, spoon over the curry sauce, decorate with pickled ginger and serve.
Kare raisu – are you a devotee of the sauce blocks, or do you use curry powder or prefer to make everything from scratch? If the latter, do you make it to your own taste or stick to the classic flavour profile? And who, apart from your mum, makes the best, whether that’s in Japan or abroad?
