Rendang Padang is one of the most sought after recipe. You can cook it for beef, chicken or even duck. Curiously beef rendang is just called rendang, where else the others are called rendang ayam for chicken, or rendang bebek for duck meat.
When one think of this recipe, it is very often associated with tedious and long hour cooking. While the later may be true, it does required about 3 hours of cooking for beef. However with chicken and duck, these meat cooked very quickly, so there should be adjustment of how it is cook.
As this dish is so delicious, it is cook with a left-over in mind, so there are some to put in freezer to be enjoy later.
Here is the recipe for 2 kg of meat
For beef rendang:
2 kg beef (gravy beef or roast beef)- cut into pieces
2 stalk lemon grass
2 tumeric leaves
2 asam kandis
4 kaffir lime leaves
10 tablespoon cooking oil ( best use grape seed oil, or rice bran oil )
1 cup hot water
1 can of 200ml coconut milk
1/2 cup of dessicated coconut( roasted until brown and grind to paste)
spices grind and fried
100g red chili
5 large Spanish onion or any other brown skin onion
1 bulb of garlic, peel of skin
4 cm of ginger
2tsp coriander powder
5 candle nut
1 tablespoon sea salt
put all these ingredient into blender and process until it formed fine paste
fried these paste with vegetable oil until fragrant.
You can made this paste and freeze for cooking at later date or make double portion, one for now and another portion for freezing.
Put pieces of meat into this fragrant spice and pour 1 cup of hot water in and cook with low fire for 2 hours until meat is almost soft and most of the water has dried up.
Then pour the coconut milk in, cook under low fire for another hour, by now most of the gravy has reduced to almost dry consistency with some red chilli oil, and only now you should put in the roasted coconut paste. as putting it in earlier will tend to burn the rendang, as it stick to the bottom of the pan.
Note: I know this recipe hasn't included the normal amount of coconut milk. I have replaced it with vegetable oil and roasted coconut so the rendang can be enjoyed without too much consumption of cholesterol.
