Nadan Beef Curry ~ Kerala Beef Curry

Jacob is not very picky about food. So it gets so easy to plan a meal. But if its Kappa, he just can't think of any other side but Beef curry. So if we have Kappa vevichathu at home, then its for sure we have Beef curry also. I am slowly starting to like that combo too; but my first preference would be Kappa and Meen curry. We are yet to find out, which combo is going to be Jordan's pick. For now, he will dig into both.

Cooking the beef in a pan rather than in the pressure cooker enhances its taste, as the beef pieces tend to get soaked up in the gravy as it cooks. However, pressure cooker is easy way to cook up the beef, but only when the curry sits for a while will the beef pieces soak up the gravy and enhance its taste. I usually go by the pressure cooker way to cook it up, because that's easy. The recipe remains the same whether you cook it in the pressure cooker or a pan. So, would you like to have some beef curry to go with your Kappa /Rice/ Chapathi/ Appam etc. then here is the recipe to the Nadan Beef curry.

Ingredients

1. 1 lb of beef, cut into cubes and cleaned
2. 1 1/2 cups of sliced red onion
3. 2 chillies, slit
4. 1 tbsp of finely chopped ginger
5. 1 tbsp of finely chopped garlic
6. 1/2 tsp of pepper powder
7. 1/2 tbsp of red chilly powder
8. 1 tbsp of coriander powder
9. 1/4 tsp of turmeric powder
10. 1/2 tsp of fennel seeds
11. 2 star anise/thakolam
12. 2 cinnamon sticks (1 inch pieces)
13. 2 cloves
14. 2 cardamom
15. Salt to taste
16. 1 sprig of curry leaves
17. 3 tbsp of oil

Method

• In a grinder, grind the ingredients 4-10 into a fine paste by adding 2 tbsp of water.
• In a pressure cooker, heat up the oil. Once hot, turn down the heat and add the ingredients 11-14. Roast it lightly untill a nice aroma starts coming. Add the onion, curry leaves and salt. Saute it till the onion turns tender. 
• Now add in the ground masala. Cook it till the oil starts appearing or clearing up. Now add the beef pieces to it. Mix it well so that the beef pieces gets coated with the masala.
• Cover and cook it for about 5 minutes while you stir it at times. 
• Now the water from the beef would have been released. 
• Cover the pressure cooker and put on the weight. Let it cook untill the beef gets cooked. For me it usually takes, 1 whistle on high heat followed by 3 whistle on low heat. However, the cooking time varies with the variety of beef.
• Turn off the heat and let the pressure go down on its own. Open the lid and check if the beef is done and the gravy is enough. If not, add little water and let it come to a boil and cook for a minute or two. Switch off the heat.
• Serve it with Bread, Chapathi, Roti, Puttu, Rice, Kappa, Appam, Parotta, etc.

Tips

1. Do not over cook the beef, else they tend to fall apart. They should stay in perfect cube shapes that they are cut into.
2. Do not add too much onion, else the beef curry would get a sweet taste.
3. You could cook the beef curry covered in the pan itself. Just that they would take longer to get cooked. But cooking it covered, tastes better than being pressure cooked. Also the gravy penetrates into the beef pieces while cooking it covered. If pressure cooked, it takes time for the beef pieces to absorb the gravy. I usually tend to pressure cook it, for the ease of cooking.
4. Do not add too much water into the beef curry. A thick gravy is what is desired, which comes out of the beef when it gets cooked. However, if you have a gravy demanding family then you may add in some water but don't overdo it.