Beef rendang recipe: Malaysia's slow-cooked classic

Beef rendang, the slow-cooked coconut beef dish now on the opening menu at Milan's new Malaysian restaurant WAU, gets its depth from one technique: cooking coconut milk down until the oil splits out and browns around the meat, rather than stopping once it's simply a thick curry.

This is Amuse Kitchen's own take on the Malaysian style, built on toasted coconut paste, or kerisik, which gives a properly cooked rendang its dark colour and dry, clinging sauce rather than a wet one.

Ingredients

The sauce takes two hours to dry out on purpose; that is the whole point of rendang.

• 900g beef shin or chuck, cut into 4cm chunks
• 4 shallots, peeled
• 4 garlic cloves, peeled
• 3cm piece galangal, peeled
• 3cm piece fresh turmeric, or 1 tsp ground turmeric
• 6 dried red chillies, soaked in hot water for 10 minutes, seeds removed
• 2 stalks lemongrass, white part only, bruised and thinly sliced
• 4 tbsp vegetable oil
• 800ml coconut milk
• 200ml water
• 100g fresh or frozen grated coconut (for the kerisik)
• 4 kaffir lime leaves, torn
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 3 star anise
• 4 cardamom pods, bruised
• 2 tbsp tamarind paste, dissolved in 100ml water
• 2 tbsp palm sugar
• Salt, to taste

Method

1. Toast the grated coconut in a dry pan over medium heat for 10-15 minutes, stirring constantly, until deep golden brown. Let it cool, then pound or blend to a paste: this is the kerisik.
2. Blend the shallots, garlic, galangal, turmeric and drained chillies to a smooth paste.
3. Heat the oil in a heavy pot and fry the paste with the cinnamon, star anise and cardamom for 5-8 minutes, until fragrant and the oil separates at the edges, cooking out the raw edge of the aromatics.
4. Add the beef and lemongrass and stir for 2 minutes to coat the meat in the paste.
5. Pour in the coconut milk and water and bring to a gentle simmer, not a hard boil, which can cause coconut milk to split unevenly. Add the kaffir lime leaves.
6. Simmer uncovered on low heat for 1.5-2 hours, stirring every 20-30 minutes and scraping the base of the pot, until the beef is tender and the liquid has reduced by about half.
7. Stir in the kerisik, tamarind and palm sugar, then season with salt. Keep cooking uncovered 20-30 minutes more, until the sauce is thick, dark brown and clings to the meat rather than pooling around it.
8. Rest for 10 minutes before serving. Like most slow-cooked dishes, rendang tastes better the next day, once the sauce has had time to settle back into the meat.

How to serve it

Serve rendang with steamed rice or, closer to how it appears on WAU's opening menu in Milan, as part of a shared hidang spread with pickles and a plainer vegetable dish. It keeps up to four days in the fridge, and the sauce only darkens as it sits.

Can I make rendang ahead? Yes — it improves overnight, once the sauce has had time to settle back into the meat.