Hong Kong Curry (咖喱牛腩饭)
Hong Kong Brisket Curry, from scratch
So this week, I wanted to show you how to make a classic at Hong Kong Chachaanteng, Curry Beef Brisket.
So for the unaware, Hong Kong Chachaanteng are… an interesting cultural phenomenon. Originally, they were ostensibly Western restaurants – albeit Western restaurants that catered to other Hong Kong locals. The name literally translated means ‘tea restaurant’, referring to the fact that they served Western dishes but gave diners tea to drink much in the same way a Chinese restaurant would.
And over the decades, these types of restaurants ended up being ground zero for a wacky and delicious sort of Canto-Western fusion. Stuff like… Pineapple buns, Macaroni in Soup, Cheesy Seafood Rice, Black Pepper ‘Steak’ on a Hotplate, Curry Beef, etc etc. To me at least, I often think of this kind of fare as sort of the inverse of American-Chinese takeout food: aggressively inauthentic to its roots, but a much beloved cultural icon nonetheless. There’s just something about sitting at one of those cramped wooden booths… sipping on a milk tea… munching on a pineapple bun or a crustless club sandwich…
I’ll stop reminiscing, I know I’m getting dangerously close to “longwinded food blogger” territory. There’s been a lot of ink spilled online on Japanese-style curry, but on closer inspection the curry served in Hong Kong is, I think, equally interesting. At its core, it’s very much a British style curry – i.e. blended. But over the years, more and more Chinese spices were added into the mix, and there’s a bit of southeast Asian flair in the form of a hit of lemongrass and coconut cream.
The way I’ll organize this is in two parts. I’ll be showing you how to make this with beef, but I wanted to show you how to do a sort of catch-all ‘curry base’ first.
Ingredients, Hong Kong Curry Base:
Ok, so right. Here’s the deal – go to your local Chinese supermarket. Do they carry Hong Kong curry paste? If so, your life’s vastly, vastly easier. Most Chachaanteng’ll use the bottled stuff, then add in things from there.
Here the thing though – even for us here in China, not every market has the Hong Kong curry paste. When we lived in Shenzhen, we actually needed to get it online. So to make this recipe actually… achievable… for those that can’t buy HK Curry Paste, we reverse engineered the bottle that we usually use. Can’t say for sure it’s exactly how it’s made in the factory, but the taste was on point in our opinion.
Hong Kong Curry Paste (咖喱胆) -or- Homemade Curry Paste, 2 tbsp. See below for the homemade curry paste.
Homemade Curry Paste: 20g tumeric powder (姜黄粉), 10g cumin powder (孜然粉), 4g chili powder (辣椒粉, cayenne pepper is ok), 2g star anise powder (八角/八角粉), 2g licorice root (甘草/甘草粉), 1g ginger powder (姜粉), 1g cinnamon powder (桂皮粉), 1g white pepper powder (白胡椒粉), 1g clove powder (丁香酚), 2g chenpi dried aged tangerine peel powder (陈皮分) -or- orange peel powder -or- lemongrass powder, 8 tbsp vegetable or peanut oil. Ok, so couple things here. For the star anise and the licorice root, you’ll likely have to toss that all in a coffee or spice grinder. Licorice root is a particularly annoying spice to grind, just a quick heads up. Chenpi (dried and aged tangerine peel) powder is kind of hard to find even in China, so if you can’t find it swap for some orange powder or lemongrass powder. It’d be theoretically possible to make your own of course, it’d just be a royal pain because you’d need to (1) reconstitute the chenpi (2) scrape off the bitter white pith (3) re-dry it and then (4) grind it into a powder. Just sub it, or honestly… you might even just be able to use orange zest for a similar effect.
Aromatics: ½ onion (洋葱), 4 cloves garlic, ~2 inches ginger, 2 shallots (干葱), 2 stalks of lemongrass (柠檬草). Onion, garlic, ginger, and shallots chopped into rough chunks. For the lemongrass, use only the white bottom portion of the lemongrass and give that a more thorough mince than the other aromatics (lemongrass’s a bit tougher).
Optional: 1 tsp turmeric powder (姜黄粉). For extra color.
Dried Bay Leaf (香叶), 2.
Hot, Boiled Water, 500mL.
Note that the curry will also be seasoned with salt and sugar, as well as finished with coconut cream. I’ll put those ingredients down below though in the name of… chronological sense.
Process, Hong Kong Curry Base:
Add the 8 tbsp of oil to a pan and get up to smoke point, then shut off the heat. Or about ~220C.
Once the oil’s cooled down a bit, ~170C, toss in the spices. Mix, let it cool down (needs about a half hour or so), then jar that up.
Prep your aromatics. Roughly chop the ginger, onion, shallot, and garlic. Finely slice the white portion of the lemongrass.
Fry the aromatics. With about a tablespoon of oil, go in with the onion and fry for ~4 minutes. Then toss in the shallot and the garlic, and fry for a minute more. Then add in the ginger and lemongrass, and fry for another minute.
Add in the curry paste and the optional turmeric powder, fry for ~1 minute. Mix well before adding so you get a good mix of oil and spices.
Add the 500mL hot water and the bay leaves. Cover, bring to a boil. Once it’s at a boil, turn your flame to low and simmer for ten minutes.
Transfer the curry to a blender, removing the bay leaves. There’s a couple different ways to crack this nut, but the blender method was what got us the closest to that chachaanteng texture.
Blend on low for one minute, then on high for another. Transfer back to the pot. Return the bay leaves. Be careful when transferring, because if you spill this stuff… that stain is never ever coming out, ever.
At this point, you now have a curry base for whatever dish you want to make. Other common additions besides beef are fried porkchop or chicken cutlet. Fishball is also an all time favorite too (but that’s a bit different, will be sharing a recipe for that when we tackle fishballs next week).
Feel free to make a big batch of this stuff and freeze it.
Remember to season with salt and sugar and finish with coconut cream as per below though!
Ingredients, Beef ‘Brisket’ Curry:
Beef plate (坑腩) -or- brisket (牛腩), 650g. So right. The most classic stewing cut of beef in Cantonese cooking is actually plate, not brisket. 90% of the time if you see ‘braised brisket’ on the menu at a Cantonese restaurant, it’s gunna be plate. People often comment that this kind of cut is used because ‘Chinese people love to eat the gristle’ – and that’s true enough – but the larger reason is because cows in Guangdong tend to be pretty lean… plate makes for a more tender braise all around. Feel free to use either cut though, we tested it with both.
To simmer the beef: ~2 inches ginger, ~2-3 sprigs scallion (葱), ~2 tbsp liaojiu a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), optional ~1/2 tbsp coriander seed (芫荽籽), optional teabag. Sorry for all the approximate amounts there, to be honest it… precision really doesn’t matter all that much. If you’re curious about why the teabag’s included, it’s actually to help tenderize the beef. Tea contains tannins which… tenderize somehow (anyone know the actual mechanism?), but the effect’s kinda subtle.
To season the curry: 2 tsp salt, 4 tsp sugar.
To finish the curry: 2 tbsp coconut cream (椰奶).
Serve alongside with rice and a bit of blanched broccoli.
Process, Curry Beef:
Soak the beef in cool water for ~1 hour. This should extract quite a bit of myoglobin from the beef. This is to reduce the so-called ‘shanwei’ of the beef – if that concept’s totally new to you, feel free to check out our discussion in our Shaoxing wine video here. Why does the soak help? No clue, really. My guess is that some of the volatile compounds produced from lipid oxidation are water soluble, so the soak helps draw those out. Please just take that explanation well salted though, it’s just a wild stab in the dark after some obsessive googling.
Add the beef to a pot together with the ginger, scallion, wine, coriander seed, and tea. Cover, bring to a boil. Once it’s at a light boil, take a look at your scum situation. If it’s getting quite frothy, no harm to skimming a bit out. No need to be paranoid as we won’t be using this liquid later, I just tend to worry about it clinging to the beef when I take it out.
Turn the beef down to a simmer, and cook – covered – for at least two hours. Then shut off the heat and let it sit in the hot water for ~30 minutes more.
Remove, and cut into ~1.5 inch pieces. Something like this is totally fine.
Toast the beef in a dry wok/pot for ~2 minutes over medium low flame. The purpose of this step is to tighten up the exterior a touch, as well as impart a bit of browning. It’ll be done once you can see a touch of oil on your wok (or pot, whatever).
Add the beef cubes to the curry base and bring to a light boil. Season. 2 tsp of salt and 4 tsp sugar, but honestly use those at benchmarks, undershoot a little, and just taste yourself. Generally best practice when working with recipes anyhow.
Cover, simmer for ~20 minutes over a low flame.
Add in the coconut cream, simmer uncovered until thickened to your liking. We like ours a touch on the thick side, so we went about 5 minutes more.
