Karee Udon – Curried Udon Noodles
Another Japanese dish! I wanted to make a Chinese dish in order to celebrate Chinese New Year but I couldn’t find a dinner guest so I had to go smaller scale. Tonight’s recipe is another one from the highly recommended book 100 Recipes from Japanese Cooking
Karee Udon – Curried Udon Noodles
Karee Udon – Curried Udon Noodles
- 4 portions boiled udon noodles (see note below)
- 7 oz beef loin thinly sliced
- 1/2 onion (I left this out because it was growing new onions)
- 1 bunch scallions
- Curry Sauce
- 7 1/2 cups dashi (see this recipe for help with dashi)
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- pinch pepper
- 3 tbsp soy sauce
- 2 1/2 oz curry roux
- starch-water mixture
- 3 – 4 tbsp cornstarch
- 3 – 4 tbsp water
- vegetable oil
- Cut beef into bite size pieces. Slice onion thinly. Cut scallions diagonally into thin slices.
- Heat oil in a skillet and saute beef and onion until tender. Add dashi, sugar, salt, pepper and soy sauce then simmer.
- Add curry roux, cook three more minutes, add starch-water mixture to thicken. (STIR!!) Add scallions just before removing from heat.
- Heat udon noodles noodles in boiling water and drain.
- Transfer noodles to bowls and top with generous amounts of curry sauce.
Note about udon noodles: You can also get these at Asian grocery stores. The best ones to get by far the ones that are frozen. All you have to do is warm them up in a pot of water and they’re perfect. Dried ones are also available but I’ve always found these to be too thin to be satisfying and they’re not nearly chewy enough to be considered udon for me. You can also make your own, but that’ll be a future recipe. 
Okay! So I did several things differently. First off, I only made this for one person. Here’s how I did it. I started with a piece of beef about the size of a deck of cards and sliced it thinly. I left out the onion because I didn’t have any. I used about 2 green onions. I only used a cup of dashi. And I dramatically cut down everything else. Instead of using a curry roux I simply added curry powder to taste. I also only used a single tablespoon of starch-water mixture.
Words cannot express just how freaking delicious this was. This is one of those foods that make a person say “Man…I could live off this for the rest of my life.” I highly recommend it! Have fun! Let me know if you make the full recipe and how it turns out.
-Oji Chef
