Galangal has a sharp, floral, sweet and almost piney aroma and flavour. The curry won’t work as well without it, I’m afraid. That is another thing about beef rendang – to each his own is carried to another level with this curry, while still respecting the boundaries.Ĭlick to read more on galangal. You can also stop cooking earlier, as long as the meat is cooked, for a wetter curry.At 3 hours, you will have meat that’s practically falling apart, which is the hallmark of a good beef rendang.We just place everything into a saucepan or a Dutch oven, and let it cook away on low heat for a good 2 1/2 to 3 hours.Basically, in our recipe, there’s no initial sautéeing involved.The method of cooking this beef rendang is something she learnt from her aunt in Ipoh, Perak (Malaysia), where the popular royal Rendang Tok is said to have originated. I have distinct memories of cooking this with her when it was just the two of us in our apartment (our family was always all over the place!). Many of those songs were Malay renditions of popular Hindi songs with my uncle doing the translating. She and my late uncle were popular for the Malay songs they used to sing.

She was a nurse until she retired, and was also a well known recording artist in her late teens and 20s. However, this beef rendang recipe (resepi rendang daging) belongs firmly with my mother. So many of my childhood recipes had their beginnings in my granny’s kitchen. Mine certainly isn’t!Īt Christmas, we can’t do without a homemade Christmas pudding, at Eid, we can’t do without beef rendang! Traditionally, no Malay wedding is complete without beef rendang, or rendang daging (daging = meat) as we would call it in Malay, just as no Hari Raya (Eid) table is quite right without this most regal of dishes. It would keep up to 4 weeks, apparently.īut beef rendang has long been adopted and considered a local dish by the Malays in Singapore and Malaysia.

The buffalo meat rendang daging would be packed in banana leaves and taken on the frequent long, arduous journeys that many workers would embark on, in their quest for new jobs in nearby cities and villages. Originally from Indonesia, going as far back as the 15th century, beef rendang started out life very humbly it was a method to cook down and preserve tough buffalo meat, the privilege of the rich in the villages of West Sumatra, Indonesia, where it is said to have originated.

Rendang cookpad