Who can resist a great vindaloo? Even a good vindaloo is great!! I reckon that the vindaloo curry is the best meal that the Portuguese invented during their time in India.
My girlfriend, who doesn’t like hot curries, is away for a while. She has an aversion to vindaloo because it’s always hot in curry houses. She had only been away for a day when I looked at the vindaloo recipes amongst the range of great Curry Focus curry recipes. And there was a Beef Vindaloo recipe that I just had to try.
Usually the only thing that you need to be aware of is that it takes a while for beef to cook properly. I checked the recipe and there was the pretty standard 90 minutes simmering time.
All in all, it would take a little over 2 hours to make the curry – not too bad.
And the good thing about this recipe is that you don’t need to marinate the beef in vinegar overnight.
I started making the meal 2 1/2 hours before the scheduled time. I started off by frying the onions and grinding the spices and making the vinegar paste while the onions were cooking. I left the cooked onions for about 15 minutes once they were cooked,to let them cool down, before making the onion paste.
From there onwards it is a pretty standard recipe to follow.
The only observation I have was that there was a lot of liquid in the frying pan when the beef was removed and the cooking of the ginger, garlic and other spices was initially more like simmering the ingredients rather than frying them. Maybe I should have tipped some, or all, of the liquid away. But I didn’t – I just followed the recipe.
I managed to clean up my usual kitchen mess while the final 90 minute simmering was underway.
The dinner guests arrived just as I was putting the rice into the microwave and so it was a pretty uneventful cooking experience.
I served up the Beef Vindaloo curry on basmati rice and everyone got stuck into the food.
And the curry was a great success. The beef was well cooked and everyone agreed it was a tasty meal. A lot of vindaloos suffer from having too much vinegar but this recipe seemed to have it about right – there was a slight taste of vinegar but it wasn’t overpowering.
The Beef Vindaloo received a taste score of 8 out of 10 with a spice/heat level of “Medium to Hot”.
This is one of the better vindaloo recipes that I’ve used and it will definitely be one that I’ll cook again.
