This time I will let your taste buds explode with some Thai beef stew with fiery peppers & lemongrass! It’s all in the lemongrass flavour and fiery peppers!
I have visited Thailand many times and became familiar with all the ingredients they use. I followed some cooking classes there and befriended some locals which taught me more about their art of cooking. Everything I tasted, I took home with me, to further explore to make different and new dishes.
This is exactly what happened when I created this dish, while having a boring day at the spa. Floating around in some salty water, clueless… thinking about dinner. I wanted to make another beef stew, a new unique one. Then it hit me, let’s combine some herbs and spices together from the Thai kitchen and create a new dish. Let me take you to that boring day at the spa that suddenly got an exciting twist!
Ingredients that serve 4:
- 600 grams of chuck beef (Riblappen for my Dutchies)
- half a can of chopped tomatoes
- Salt & freshly ground pepper
- a dust of flour (or cornstarch if you go gluten-free)
- 3 lemon leaves
- a chuck of Thai galangal
- 2 red onions
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 1 stalk of lemongrass
- 3 thai red chillies
- 1 cube of beef stock
- horapa leaves
- 50cl to 100 cl of water
- Coriander for garnish optional
Directions:
1. Grab a pot of your choice to make this stew in, make sure it is a heavy pot, so nothing will burn. Put a good piece of margarine butter in there and dice your onion.
2. When the butter is melted, toss in the onion and the chopped red chillies.
3. While you have your melting pot going on there, you dice your meat into cubes and get some flavour in by rubbing some salt and pepper in your beef. Dust it with some flour or cornstarch to get a light coating. When you have done this, add the meat to the pot.
4. Chop your cloves of garlic and add them. Give it a nice stir and let the flavours combine. If the bottom of the pan gets sticky, you might want to add a tiny bit of water and stir again.
5. When the meat turns brown, you want to add your bruised lemongrass and galangal. Make sure to incise the galangal 1cm, so the inner flavours will marry with the rest of your dish. Happily ever after, yes, fairy Thai style!
6. Now add 50cl to 100cl of water to your pot and add the diced tomatoes ( and one stalk of horapa leaves as well, but if your Asian supermarket doesn’t have them that’s not the end of the world).
7. Now let it boil, simmer, sit and stir sometimes… that is all the care it needs, meanwhile take care of yourself. Read a nice book, play a game, whatever you like.
8. Let it simmer for 3 hours depending on how tender you like your meat. Maybe a little less, maybe a little more. Put in the lime leaves 15 minutes before you take the heat off. It will leave a nice uplifting taste in your stew as Thai flavours can be overwhelming.
9. Garnish with coriander and ‘Kor hai mue nee pen mue arhan tee aroi na!‘ ( Bon Appetit!)