Beef rendang the slow cooker way

If there's one thing slow cookers are very useful for (as well as keeping food warm to feed hungry hordes when prep time is short), it's producing stews and other dishes with fall-apart tender meat, and the latest dish to benefit from this treatment in my kitchen is beef rendang. 

This legendary Malaysian curry features fragrant spice paste and creamy coconut milk that cooks down over hours into a thick and rich sauce, while chunks of beef soak up the flavour and become toothsomely tender.  In the past I have been put off trying to make it because many recipes have an intimidatingly long list of ingredients, some of which can be hard to find (buah keras, galangal) or challenging to handle in a home kitchen (shrimp paste -- I can never work out what to do with the rest of the block, and although I am a fan of strong flavours, toasting it really does make the house smell). 

A few years ago, though, I found this recipe over at Rasa Malaysia.  I am too lazy to peel shallots very often (and besides they are much more expensive than red onions), I had chilli flakes rather than whole dried chillies in the cupboard when I first tried this, and see above re galangal, so I made some modifications to the ingredient list; also I like my rendang with potatoes -- not very authentic, I suspect, but what can I say, I like potatoes -- so I added some.  With these few small adaptations, this recipe makes the preparation manageable and produces what I consider to be an adequately authentic (apart from the potatoes -- shh!) rendang. 

It does, however, still take quite a while to cook, simmering on the stove.  I made a triple batch for a curry party and my notes show that it took five hours to reduce and reach the right consistency!  This is fine when you have nothing better to do than read a book and stir occasionally, but sometimes food needs to cook itself.  This is where the slow cooker comes in, and is perfect for this purpose.  Reducing the amount of liquid by halving the coconut milk and adding extra dessicated coconut, cutting the potatoes bigger and letting everything cook together for eight or so hours, and then adding extra lime leaves and seasoning as needed a shorter time before serving, worked to produce a version that was just as good as my usual method and much more convenient!

Below is my usual recipe, followed by the slow cooker modification.  I might not bother to use the slow cooker for a single batch (it is huge and hard to clean) but when feeding a few people, it's worth it; the double recipe served 7 with rice and a couple of vegetable side dishes, and there was enough left over for me to eat on toast the next day... even better.

Spice paste 

1 red onion [or 5 shallots]

5 cloves garlic

2-inch fat piece ginger [or 1 inch each ginger & galangal]

3 stalks lemongrass, white part only, sliced (save tops for later)

1 tbs dried chilli flakes (or 12 small dried chillies) soaked in hot water

1 tbs curry powder

2 tsp cinnamon

50 ml oil

3 cloves

3 cardamom pods

3 star anise

1.5 lb stewing beef, cut into 1-11/2inch chunks

tops of lemongrass, pounded

30g tamarind paste, soaked in about 1/3 cup hot water

1 can (400g) coconut milk, rinsed with a little water (1/4 can)

1/3 cup desiccated coconut

6 kaffir lime leaves, finely sliced

2 tbs brown sugar

2 medium potatoes, cut into 1 inch cubes

~1 tsp salt or to taste

Whizz the ingredients for spice paste together until well blended.  Heat oil in heavy-based pan over medium-high heat and fry spice paste and whole spices for 5 minutes or until fragrant.  Add beef and stir until all pieces are well coated with spice paste and starting to cook on the outside in places.  Add lemongrass stalks, coconut milk and tamarind pulp dissolved in soaking water (remove any seeds); bring to boil.

Simmer briskly until meat is almost cooked. 

Meanwhile toast the coconut in a heavy-based pan or wok over medium-high heat, stirring constantly to make sure it doesn’t burn, until it is a deep golden brown colour.

Add toasted coconut, lime leaves and sugar to beef, reduce heat to low and simmer half-covered for 60-90 minutes or longer.  Check consistency of sauce and cover or uncover as required; ideal consistency at end of cooking time should be thick.  Stir occasionally to prevent sticking.  With 30 minutes to go, add potatoes, taste and season with salt as required; continue to cook until meat is very tender, potatoes are done and sauce is thick.  (Double recipe makes a big panful.)

Slow cooker version (double batch)

Double the quantities of ingredients except for oil to fry spice paste (75ml should do) and coconut milk (leave at 1 can); use 1 cup of dessicated coconut; and cut the potatoes into bigger chunks (about 2 inches; they're going to cook along with the beef so need to be bigger in order not to fall apart).

Set slow cooker on high to preheat; chop potatoes and throw them in.  Make spice paste, fry with beef, add coconut milk and tamarind water and bring to boil as above (meanwhile toast coconut) then add all remaining ingredients, mix well and pour over potatoes in slow cooker.  Poke everything around a bit to even it up and leave to cook for 8 hours on low.  (If I have time, I like to leave it on high until it starts to bubble around the edges and then switch the heat to low.)  

At the end of this time the meat and potatoes should be very tender.  Stir carefully and taste for seasoning -- I found it needed a bit more salt and added about 2 tbs fish sauce and a bit more sugar.  Add another few lime leaves, roughly torn, to freshen it up, and leave to keep warm for a while longer before serving so that the flavours blend.