The kare-kare dish is a timeless classic. It was most probably a panghandaan recipe before peanut butter and rice flour were readily commercial products. This is because grinding the peanuts and the toasted rice kernels would take lots of effort and time to create. A smooth sauce to the kare-kare is hard to make if you’re just using a mortar and pestle.
The good news is that you don’t have to go through all that trouble anymore, especially if you use ready-made ingredients and substitute the meat for one that cooks faster. The even better news is that you can still make it taste as close to the from-scratch version with these tweaks:
- • To give your peanut sauce a more authentic taste and texture, add finely chopped or ground peanuts in addition to the peanut butter.
- • Toast the rice flour! Use a dry pan over low heat and gently cook the flour until you get a whiff of toasted notes from the mixture. Cool before using.
- • Atsuete seeds can be hard to find. Make do by using prepared annatto powder, but lessen the amount of rice flour. The powder is commonly mixed with a thickening agent that may affect your dish.
- • Use chicken! Oxtail isn’t easy to find but more than that, oxtail, pork, and even beef all require the meat to be tenderized before it can be served! Chicken, fortunately, does not so that means you’ll be ready to serve the kare-kare earlier than if you used other kinds of meat.
If you’re willing to do all of these tweaks to your recipe, the dish that will result will be extra delicious! We used chicken in this recipe so it cooks faster.
Here’s the full recipe of a chicken kare-kare that will make kare-kare a dish you won’t be intimidated to make more often:
Peanut stew recipes like this are easy if you have all the ingredients you need! Here are articles about cooking tips you can use the next time you make some kare-kare for dinner:
***
