Sri Lankan Beef Curry
Traditionally beef curry is slow-cooked so the beef becomes tender and the spices flavor the meat. The basic trio of spices is used: curry powder, chili powder and turmeric. Plenty of onion, garlic, ginger and tomatoes flavor the curry along with cardamom and cloves to give it more depth. Beef curry is one of my husband’s favorites so I make it regularly and have figured out which short-cuts work out.
What Meat to Buy
In my opinion the best cut of beef is “Chuck Roast”. It’s usually tied up with string for roasting in the oven and slicing. It’s got a lot of marbled fat in it for flavor and it’s the quickest to become tender when slow-cooking. Another option is to buy “Stew Meat” this is usually odd bits of various cuts that come in small chunks. “Top Round” is also another cut of meat that would make a good curry. Basically any cut of meat that’s cheaper and requires slow-cooking vs. the expensive steaks.
Faster Version of the Sauté Step
Usually beef is cut into fairly large cubes and sautéd in a pan to lock in the juices of the meat before slow-cooking. In this recipe the sauté step is done in the Instant Pot itself. If the beef is cut small enough there’s no need to brown them a few pieces at a time which is really time-consuming. Instead, all the beef can be sautéd together in the pot till most of the pieces have a cooked tinge on the outside.
Time Savings Via the Instant Pot
Instant Pots are great for dumping in all your ingredients and getting something else done while it’s cooking. No worrying about checking on a curry, adding liquids, stirring, tasting for texture of the meat etc. I use the sauté setting to partly fry the onions, garlic, ginger and meat at the start of the recipe, no extra clean-up needed. Then add the liquid and close the pot and let it work it’s magic of softening the meat in a fraction of the time it usually takes.
Ingredients For Acidity
To tenderize the meat and add flavor to the curry one usually needs an acidic ingredient of some kind. Usually lots of chopped tomato. I happened to have a small sachet of tamarind concentrate at home and had not much tomato at home so I used the tamarind in the video. Tamarind is a good tomato-substitute. Another alternate is of course vinegar.
Click here for beef curry made the old-fashioned way on a stove-top.
Instapot Sri Lankan Beef Curry
Equipment
- 1 Instant Pot (6 Quart size, if your size is different cooking time may vary slightly)
Ingredients
- 2 lb beef chuck roast or similar cut of meat
- 2 medium onions
- 5 cloves garlic
- 1 inch piece ginger
- 1 small tomato
- 2 tsp tamarind concentrate (2 small tomatoes diced are a good substitute)
- 1 tsp salt
- 3 tsp chilli powder
- 3 tsp Sri Lankan curry powder (1:1 ratio of ground-cumin:ground-coriander)
- 1/2 tsp turmeric powder
- 1 tbsp coconut oil
- 1/2 cup coconut milk
- 5 seeds fenugreek (optional)
- 1 sprig curry leaves (optional)
- 5 cloves (optional)
- 3 cadamon pods (optional)
Instructions
- Dice the onions. Finely chop the garlic and ginger.
- Cut up the beef into 3/4 inch or 1 inch cubes roughly. Add most of the salt (reserving some for frying onions) and the chili powder, curry powder and turmeric. Mix until pieces are mostly coated in spices.
- You can add the cloves, cardamon and fenugreek whole like it's traditionally done. I prefer to smash them up into a powder in a mortar and pestle so you don't taste pesky pieces of spices in your curry.
- Turn on your Instapot to the Sauté setting.
- Add coconut oil. Sauté onions with the remaining salt for a couple minutes. Then garlic and ginger and curry leaves sauté until the onion is softened. Then add the tomato and fry another couple minutes.
- Add the meat and keep stirring till the meat looks mostly cooked on the outside. This is a quick way of searing it. Once it looks seared add 1/2 cup of coconut milk. Add about 1/2 cup water until the meat is about 3/4 covered in liquid. The meat will release liquid as it cooks and unlike a regular pan nothing evaporates in an Instapot – so don't add too much.
- Press Cancel on your Instapot. Close the lid. Switch to the Meat/Stew setting and set it for 10 minutes.
- It cooks pretty fast since it was already heated with all the sautéing. Let it natural release at least 20 minutes.
- Check that the meat is soft enough for your liking and that the curry has enough salt. (If you prefer a thicker gravy switch it to sauté and let some of the liquid evaporate.)
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