The World Table

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Thai · Main

Massaman Curry

  • Intermediate
  • 2 h
  • roughly 3 of 4 for cost

warm-spiced · umami-deep · rich · sweet-edged Leads with warm spice humming through the middle, savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes, trailing gentle sweetness.

Ingredients

  • 800g beef chuck, chunks
  • 4 tbsp massaman paste
  • 500ml coconut milk
  • Potatoes, onions, roasted peanuts
  • Tamarind, palm sugar, fish sauce
  • Cinnamon stick, star anise, cardamom

The skills inside

Frying the paste until the oil splits

The words inside

ChuckCoconut MilkThai Red Curry PasteThe Souring Spices: Amchur, Loomi, Anardana & Tamarind

Allergen screen

Found: nuts · peanuts · fish

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Crack the coconut cream; fry the paste and whole spices until fragrant.
  2. Add beef, remaining coconut milk, water to cover; simmer 90 min. 90 min
  3. Add potatoes and onion, 25 min more. 25 min
  4. Balance: tamarind sour, palm sugar sweet, fish sauce salt. Peanuts in at the end.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Frying the paste until the oil splits 95 recipes

  • It is being fried, not simmered: the paste is in fat over live heat and moving, holding a steady sizzle throughout rather than bubbling as a wet mass.
  • The colour has deepened and darkened from raw to cooked, and the volume has visibly reduced and tightened.
  • The split, the signal the whole technique is named for, is unmistakable when it comes: clear fat separates out and pools at the edges and on the surface, and the paste pulls away from the pan floor in one mass.
  • The smell has turned from sharp and raw to round and fragrant, with no raw bite left from any of the aromatics that went into it.
  • Nothing has caught: no black specks through the paste, no bitterness, and a pan floor that is browned but not burnt.

Where it goes wrong It was taken off as soon as it smelled good, before the fat separated; the raw edge of the aromatics is still in it, and the finished dish tastes thin and sharp no matter how long it simmers afterwards.

At the Table

The Pour
Cabernet Sauvignon or Malbec
Also Right
Tempranillo (Rioja Reserva)
From the Taps
Amber ale
Zero-Proof
Sparkling water, make room

Tannin binds to seared protein and fat: each bite softens the wine, each sip resets the palate: the steakhouse equation.

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Massaman Curry Technique: BraisingThe skill inside this recipe Search YouTube: Pailin’s Kitchen on Massaman Curry A YouTube search for Pailin’s Kitchen and this dish. No affiliation.