What is kare udon?
Kare is the Japanese word for curry. Japanese curry tastes milder and sweeter than Indian curry and in Japan usually comes as a thick sauce over rice, known as curry rice. For kare udon, noodle shops thin this sauce with broth. It stays thinner than curry on rice and thicker than an udon soup. You eat the dish from a deep bowl with chopsticks and a spoon.
The right ingredients
- Udon: Frozen udon from an Asian grocery store stay the firmest. You need a portion of about 200 g per person. Use dried udon at 100 g per person. Types and buying are explained in udon noodles, and you can knead fresh noodles following the recipe how to make udon noodles.
- Curry powder or curry cubes: The card uses Japanese curry powder. If you use the ready-made curry blocks (roux), dissolve 2 cubes of about 40 g in total in the broth and leave out the cornstarch. The cubes contain flour and fat and thicken the sauce themselves.
- Broth: With vegetable broth the dish stays free of meat and fish. It tastes more Japanese with dashi made from kombu and bonito, and instant dashi is enough for that. More under dashi and dashi powder.
How to make the curry sauce
Toast the curry powder briefly
Add the powder to the onions and carrots and stir for 30 seconds over medium heat. The powder turns fragrant but does not burn yet. If it stays longer in the hot fat, the sauce turns bitter.
Mix the starch cold
Stir the cornstarch smooth in 2 tbsp cold water and pour it into the simmering sauce. Let it cook for another minute. Only then does it thicken and lose its floury taste. The finished sauce should run off the spoon and coat the noodles. If it is too thick, add 50 ml broth.
Cook the noodles separately
Cook the udon in their own pot. Udon release starch, and cooked in the sauce everything turns sticky. Drain the noodles and put them in the hot sauce for a minute so they take on flavor.
Common mistakes
- No thickening: Without starch or curry cubes the sauce stays watery and runs off the noodles.
- Starch in hot water: It clumps immediately. Use cold water.
- White clothing: Curry splashes when you slurp and leaves yellow stains. Tie on an apron.
- Noodles in the sauce too long: Udon keep absorbing liquid, and the sauce turns thick as porridge. Serve right away.
Variations
In Japan, thinly sliced beef or pork often goes into the sauce. Fry 150 g of it with the onions. With fried tofu, the bowl tastes similar to kitsune udon, only with curry. If you have curry left over from the day before, thin it 1 : 1 with broth and skip making the sauce. For a filling dinner, lay a chicken katsu cut into strips on the noodles.
