R040Nadan Kozhi Curry
The everyday country chicken curry
Recipes › Chicken, Egg and Meat
R049
Beef Curry with Coconut Slivers
Nadan beef curry — the wet cousin of the roast
Photograph: Adobe Stock · representative of the dish
The re-engineeringSix hundred grams of beef for six people instead of four, with 350 g of shallots and tomato and 250 ml of second-extraction coconut milk carrying the volume. Coconut oil at 18 g, and no first-extraction milk at all — a nadan beef curry does not need it and is better without.
Where R048 drives all the liquid off, this keeps it. It is the everyday Kottayam beef curry: dark, loose enough to spoon over rice, with coconut slivers softened in the gravy rather than toasted crisp. It is also the demonstration of the chapter's second principle in its plainest form. One hundred grams of beef per person, in a generous gravy with a pulse and a thoran beside it, does not read as a small portion. It reads as dinner.
Before you start: Have the coconut slivered and the shallots sliced before the braise begins, because the two go in at different times and the pot will be ready before you are.
Beef Curry with Coconut Slivers
Active 30 minutes Total 1 hour 45 minutes in a pot, or 50 minutes in a pressure cooker
Scale
6 servings
Ingredients — tap to tick off
- ✓18 g (1¼ tbsp) coconut oil
- ✓200 g (about 20) shallots, sliced
- ✓30 g (2 tbsp) ginger-garlic-green chilli paste (M16)
- ✓25 fresh curry leaves
- ✓20 g (3½ tbsp) ground coriander
- ✓8 g (1½ tsp) Kashmiri chilli powder
- ✓4 g (¾ tsp) coarsely crushed black pepper
- ✓4 g (¾ tsp) fennel seed, crushed
- ✓3 g (½ tsp) ground turmeric
- ✓150 g (1½) tomatoes, chopped
- ✓600 g stewing beef (chuck or shoulder), in 3 cm cubes
- ✓60 g (⅔ cup) fresh coconut, in thin slivers
- ✓4.5 g (¾ tsp) 70:30 salt (M07)
- ✓300 ml water
- ✓250 ml second-extraction coconut milk (M08)
- ✓5 g (1 tsp) Kerala garam masala (M01)
Allergens: None of the major allergens as the recipe is written. Sesame or peanuts — whichever of the two oils you use (it reaches the dish through M16).
Equipment: Pressure cooker or heavy lidded pot, 4 litre. Substitute: a slow cooker on high for 4–5 hours; you lose the browning at step 3, so brown the meat in the pan first.
Per serving (estimated)
| Energy | 343 kcal |
| Protein | 22 g |
| Fibre | 6 g |
| Net carbohydrate | 9 g |
| Total carbohydrate | 15 g |
| Sugars | 5 g |
| Fat | 24 g |
| Saturated fat | 14 g |
| Sodium | 280 mg |
From ICMR-NIN IFCT 2017 and USDA FoodData Central. Per-serving figures stay the same when you scale.
Method — tap a step to mark it done, tap a time to start a timer
- Heat the oil in the cooker or pot over medium heat, add the shallots, and cook until soft and the colour of weak tea, .
- Add the M16 and curry leaves; cook . Then the coriander, chilli, pepper, fennel and turmeric, stirring constantly for 60–90 seconds until they darken and smell toasted.
- Add the tomato and cook until it collapses and a rim of oil appears, . Add the beef and turn it in the masala over high heat until the outside has changed colour all over, .
- Add the coconut slivers, salt and water. Pressure-cook at full pressure and release naturally; or cover and simmer to , until a cube yields to gentle pressure from a spoon.
- Uncover and reduce over medium heat until the gravy has thickened and darkened and just coats the meat, . Taste now, before the milk goes in, and adjust salt here.
- Pour in the second-extraction milk and bring back to a bare simmer for . Second extraction tolerates this; first extraction would not, which is why there is none in the recipe.
- Finish with the M01 off the heat and rest . Better still, rest overnight.
Why this worksCoconut slivers cooked in liquid behave completely differently from slivers toasted in a pan: they hydrate, soften and release fat and soluble solids into the gravy, thickening it and giving it a sweetness that balances 20 g of coriander. That is why this dish needs no thick milk. The gelatine from the beef's connective tissue does the rest of the body — which is why the cheap cut makes the better curry.
Sourcing note
This is the recipe for the cheap cut. Chuck, shoulder, blade, shin, brisket point — anything with visible connective tissue — will be better here than an expensive steak cut, which has nothing to convert to gelatine and will simply toughen. Shin, if your butcher has it, gives the best gravy of all.
If you are watching…
Blood sugar: 9 g of net carbohydrate. Pair it with 150 g of cooked matta rice and 100 g of cooked vanpayar and the whole plate lands at a moderate glycaemic load with 30 g of protein.
Blood pressure: 280 mg, and this is a dish that carries almost no added salt — 4.5 g of M07 across six servings. The coriander, pepper and fennel are doing the work.
Cholesterol: 14 g of saturated fat, split roughly 10 g from the beef and 4 g from the coconut. Using trimmed lean beef instead takes it to about 9 g and costs the gravy some richness; the coconut slivers are what make the dish, so take it out of the meat.
Swap it
Lean trimmed beef → about 9 g of saturated fat and 250 kcal per serving. Braise 5 minutes less.
Mutton or goat → 600 g, pressure-cooked 20–25 minutes. Leaner again, at about 6 g of saturated fat per serving.
Add 300 g of cooked kadala at step 5 → eight servings, 8 g of fibre each, and it is a better plate than the original.
No coconut milk → 40 g of roasted coconut paste (M09) at step 5. Darker, thicker, smokier, and about the same saturated fat.
Make ahead · store · freeze
Genuinely better on day two, in the way the fish curries are. Fridge 4 days. Freeze 3 months — it freezes better than any coconut-milk dish in the book, because the milk is second extraction. Reheat at a bare simmer, 6–8 minutes, adding a splash of water if it has tightened.
Leftovers
Shred the meat, reduce the gravy hard, and you have the filling for kappa biryani or a pathiri. Or thin it with second milk and vegetables for a second night's stew.
Troubleshooting
Meat tough: undercooked, not overcooked. Give it another 10 minutes under pressure.
Gravy thin and pale: step 5 was skipped. Reduce before the milk goes in.
Sweet and flat: not enough pepper, or the coriander was not toasted at step 2. A nadan beef curry should have a pepper finish.
Serve with
R015 Matta Rice · R004 Puttu · R053 Vanpayar Thoran · R069 Avial
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