“Curry rice” is one of the most beloved home-cooked meals in Japanese households. It is consumed so much to the point it should be considered one of the unofficial national foods! And just as Japanese food manufacturers have made it easy to make the beloved ramen at home with instant options, making great-tasting homemade style curry rice is just as easy. Here is your quick guide for all the basics of the Japanese curry so that you can make it exactly the way you want it at home as well!
Japanese curry is thicker and milder compared to other curries, like the Indian or Thai variations. It is typically served over sticky or short-grain rice. But another popular way to serve curry is over udon, which is the thick, wheat flour noodle soup.
The key ingredient and what makes Japanese curry unique is the roux. I suppose you could make the roux from scratch, but this is where you can cut all the extra time and effort by purchasing the boxed curry roux from the Japanese companies. There are a lot of varieties of curry roux, but the majority of them are manufactured by the Japanese food manufacturers S&B and House. To my unrefined palate, they are all good and there aren’t many noticeable differences in the roux, maybe except for the level of the spiciness.
Store-bought curry roux usually comes in three levels of spiciness; mild, medium or hot. Mild has absolutely no heat at all, almost on the sweet side. But Medium is barely spicy. With the Hot option, you do start to notice some heat. There is now the Extra Hot option available but it’s nowhere near spicy as what you might expect from an Indian curry. So, if you love the most extreme spiciness, you will need to add extra red peppers flakes or chili peppers to the Hot or Extra Hot roux as you cook to achieve the level of heat you want.
The most traditional ingredients to put in the curry are:
You can further customize the curry the way you want by adding some of these other ingredients based on your preference:
If you are not a beef fan, you can also make the curry using other meats, cut into bite size pieces. Follow my Instant Pot recipe below to get the best result for curry cooked with meat. You can also skip the meat, of course, and the curry tastes just as good!
I have heard that people add some of the following ingredients at the same time as the roux to further enhance the flavor to their liking. I don’t suggest adding ALL of the items below at once, but you can experiment with the following (about 1 tablespoon of each) to see if any of the ingredients below can help achieve the optimum flavor that you and your family might like even more:
Pro tip: Make the curry one day in advance and refrigerate. The flavors blend into the meat and vegetables overnight and the curry tastes better on the second or even the third day! If you keep it too much longer though, the curry will start to separate and look kinda gnarly.
If you cooked a lot of things into the curry, you may not want or need to top the curry before serving it over rice or udon. But some of the options I have seen are:
If you have ever had the Japanese curry rice at a restaurant or in Japan, the most traditional relish that accompanies the dish is the bright red and crunchy fukujinzuke. Fukujinzuke is pickled, finely chopped vegetables usually consisting of daikon, cucumbers, eggplants and lotus root.
There are two basic ways to make the curry:
Since you can just follow the directions on the package to cook it in the traditional way, I’ve provided the recipes below to make the curry using the Instant Pot. Over the years, I’ve made the curry using the traditional method. But Instant Pot has been a game changer! Just as the pot roast comes out so much faster and tender using Instant Pot, the curry can be perfectly cooked with tender meat using Instant Pot!
Instructions: To make 1 whole package of curry sauce mix (12 servings)
Once the curry is cooked, you can serve it the following ways:
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