I can't find long dried Thai chillies. I know the small ones are hotter, but can I substitute 9 long dried chillies with a few small fresh ones?
Also, will the paste keep if I make it a day ahead of the rest? Thanks!

Yes you can substitute with fresh chilies, or the small dried chilies. You will just have to use less as they will be quite a bit hotter. Try using just a few at first to see how hot it is.

This may alter the color somewhat but in the end it dish will still be delicious.

Hello,
After I have mixed all the ingredients together, I finished this in a claypot in the oven, free up some time to do some other things. I omitted the tamarind and ketchup manis, and added 2 stalks of lemon grass. Certainly taste better the next day.
Faye

Made this dish for friends on New Years, but rather than cook it on the stove top I used the oven. I cooked it at 200°F/95°C for about 6 hours...really nice and tender.

I bought a 3 lb beef shoulder and cut it up myself. There was plenty for everyone (6 of us) with leftovers...Yum!

This year, instead of a traditional turkey, I decided to make a rijstaffel for my Dutch/Indonesian in-laws, and the feature dish was your beef rendang. It was an 8-course menu, and the beef rendang was the clear hit of the dinner. I'll make it again for sure, maybe with fewer courses to go with it (whew!). Thanks for the great recipe.

What is kecap manis???
Thks

It is an Indonesian soy sauce that is thick and sweet (from palm sugar). It is really yummy!

Hi, I'm from Indonesia and often cook rendang but without kecap manis. Since the origin of rendang come from Padang, Sumatra, they never sweetened the cook that have chilies as one of the ingredients.

Later on, the Padang restaurant become popular around all Indonesia, the Javanese who prefer the sweet taste add kecap manis to balance the hot of the chili.

If you can buy a fresh coconut, here we prepare the coconut milk in two type of thickness:
1. The thick milk (by adding just a few water to the shredded coconut and squeeze them once)
2. The light milk (by adding enough water to cover the beef to the same shredded coconut and squeeze them several times)

The light milk use to broth the beef till tender and we add the thick milk after it. This technique to prevent the sauce to split and give a natural sweet and rich flavor to the rendang.

As you say this is a matter of what taste we prefer, just to share my experience of cooking rendang. Sorry for my poor English.

Hi There: I have Kaffir lime leaves (not fresh) but I can't seem to find fresh Kaffir Limes anywhere. Is there something I can use as a substitute? Will regular lime zest give me a similar result and are my dried leaves going to be okay?

Thanks

If you type in "kaffir" in the search bar (top right of each page) you will find a few threads on this. Here is one in particular that you might find helpful. Cheers!

If you cannot find fresh kaffir lime leaves then dried is still a fairly good option (if they are not too old and dried out). Cheers!

going over the stewing technique i am just curious how this recipe fits in since the the dry spices and paste are fried before adding the meat. That seems to be contra the explanation of first searing the meat with spices, adding your flavor layers before deglasing and adding the cooking liquid.

Why not follow the same order for this recipe. Really curious to understand the logic behind it better. thx!

The thing with cooking is that every culture has their own way of doing things. This is simply just another method of stewing. You could follow the way taught in the lesson and achieve similar results. One of the greatest things about cooking is that there is rarely only one way to do something. Cheers!

This is absolutely one of the most delicious dishes I have ever made. My guests were ecstatic!!! I left out the kecap manis because it was not gluten free and one of my guests has a problem. I added it back in to the leftovers the next day. Either way it was fantastic.