Massaman Beef Curry
The mildest Thai curry and the slowest — warm with cinnamon, cardamom and star anise, thickened with peanuts, and better the next day.
Nutrition Info (per serving)
- 720
- Calories
- 42g
- Protein
- 44g
- Fat
- 38g
- Carbs
Ingredients
- 1 kg beef shin or chuck
- 5 tbsp massaman curry paste
- 800 ml coconut milk (2 tins), not shaken
- 500 g waxy potatoes
- 1 large onion
- 80 g roasted peanuts
- 3 tbsp fish sauce
- 3 tbsp palm sugar
- 3 tbsp tamarind paste
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 4 cardamom pods
- 2 star anise
- 3 bay leaves
- 1 tbsp neutral oil
- Jasmine rice, to serve
Instructions
- 1Cut the beef into 4 cm chunks. Larger than feels right — they shrink a lot over two hours.
- 2Peel the potatoes and cut them into 4 cm pieces. Cut the onion into thick wedges.
- 3Open the coconut milk tins without shaking them and spoon off about 200 ml of the thick cream from the top. Keep the thin milk separately.
- 4Heat the oil in a heavy casserole over high heat and brown the beef in two or three batches, about 3 minutes a side. Do not crowd the pan — browning is flavour, and steamed grey beef gives you neither. Set the browned beef aside.
- 5Lower the heat to medium. Add the thick coconut cream to the same pan and let it bubble for 3 to 5 minutes until it splits and clear oil pools at the edges.
- 6Add the curry paste and fry in the split oil for 2 to 3 minutes, until it darkens and smells fragrant.
- 7Add the whole spices — cinnamon, cardamom, star anise, bay — and stir for 30 seconds.
- 8Return the beef with any resting juices, pour in the thin coconut milk, and add enough water to just cover. Bring to a bare simmer.
- 9Cover and cook very gently for 90 minutes. It should barely move; a rolling boil makes the beef tighten and the coconut milk split.
- 10Add the potatoes, onion and peanuts. Simmer uncovered for another 30 to 40 minutes, until the beef pulls apart under a fork and the sauce has thickened.
- 11Season with the fish sauce, palm sugar and tamarind. Massaman should taste sweet and sour before it tastes salty, which is what sets it apart from the other Thai curries.
- 12Rest for 10 minutes off the heat, then serve with jasmine rice. It is better still on the second day.
Massaman does not taste like the other Thai curries, and the reason is history. The whole spices in it — cinnamon, cardamom, star anise, cloves — arrived with Persian and Indian traders, and the dish that resulted is a Thai curry with a Middle Eastern accent.
Why this one is mild
Green and red curries are built on fresh or dried chillies in quantity. Massaman uses far fewer, and fills the space with warm aromatic spices instead. It is the Thai curry to give someone who does not like heat, and the one that most rewards long cooking.
Beef shin, not steak
Shin and chuck are worked muscles full of connective tissue. Two hours of gentle heat turns that collagen into gelatine, which is what makes the sauce glossy and the meat pull apart in strands.
Lean, tender cuts do the opposite. Fillet or rump in a two-hour braise ends up dry and stringy, because there is no collagen to convert and nothing left to hold moisture. Braising is one of the few places where the cheap cut is genuinely the better one.
Brown the beef properly
Browning is not about sealing anything in — that idea has been disproven for decades. It is about the Maillard reaction, which creates hundreds of new flavour compounds on the surface of the meat.
It only happens above about 140C, and a crowded pan drops well below that as the meat releases water. Two or three batches with space between the pieces takes five extra minutes and is the difference between a curry that tastes deep and one that tastes flat.
Sweet and sour first
Most Thai savoury dishes lead with salt. Massaman leads with the interplay of palm sugar and tamarind, with fish sauce underneath rather than on top. Season at the end, taste, and adjust in small amounts — tamarind brands vary a lot in strength.
Why the second day is better
Braises improve overnight for real reasons, not folklore. The gelatine sets and then re-melts with a better texture, fat redistributes through the sauce, and the whole spices continue to infuse as it cools.
Cool it fast, refrigerate for up to three days, and reheat gently. It also freezes well for three months, though the potatoes go slightly grainy.
Nutrition
A serving is substantial — around 720 calories with 42 grams of protein, and a lot of the fat from coconut and peanuts. Beef shin is an excellent source of iron, zinc and B12, and the long cook makes it very digestible.
To lighten it, use light coconut milk for the thin portion and increase the potato in place of some of the beef.
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