Beef Rendang
This Beef Rendang recipe is from a payroll lady at a company I used to work for. It’s her Malaysian mother’s recipe. I still remember, so many years later, how we used to bond over food at the water cooler! I actually first published this recipe a couple of years ago but I’ve made some minor improvements that will make your life easier without changing the flavour at all. Plus I made a recipe video! Beef Rendang is the king of all curries!
Here in Sydney, you can get all the ingredients for Beef Rendang at Woolworths and Coles. Seriously! Originally from Indonesia though now more well known as a Malaysia curry, the sauce is made with aromatic spices like cinnamon, cardamom and star anise as well as fresh aromatics including lemongrass, garlic, ginger and galangal. Unlike many curries, Beef Rendang is a dry curry which means there is not loads of sauce. However, the meat is so ridiculously tender and has a thick coating of sauce on each piece, so when the meat literally falls apart at a touch, it mixes through rice, flavouring it like saucy curries. If you love South East Asian curries, Beef Rendang is without a doubt one of the best!
How to make Beef Rendang
Though there’s a fair few ingredients in this, some of which may not be familiar to you and are certainly not everyday ingredients even in my world, it’s actually quite a straightforward recipe: An interesting cooking method with Beef Rendang is the way it gets the deep brown colour. All throughout the video, right up until the very end, you will notice that the sauce is a pale brown colour. It’s not until the very end when the sauce reduces right down and the oil separates that it turns brown, essentially the browning of the beef in the oil of the sauce.
This Beef Rendang can be made in a slow cooker, but I find it easiest to make it all on the stove. Especially given it starts on the stove with the browning of the beef and spice paste, then finishes on the stove with the reducing of the sauce and browning of the beef (this part cannot be done in a slow cooker). This is one of those recipes that just gets better with time. So whenever possible, I try to make this a day or two in advance. It also freezes extremely well. I serve this with my Restaurant Style Coconut Rice because it’s my copycat of the coconut rice you get at the posh modern Asian restaurants! – Nagi xx PS You see those bits stuck on the beef that could be shredded coconut?? It’s not. It’s bits of shredded BEEF. Because it’s so tender by the end, when you’re stirring it, some bits do flake off. YUM!
WATCH HOW TO MAKE IT
Beef Rendang recipe video!
LIFE OF DOZER
Dozer’s got a boo boo. i.e. Shredded his paw by tearing manically across a bed of oyster shells in pursuit of a pelican. Let’s not feel too sorry for him though. He’s been pretty pampered.
