Hokkaido Soup Curry (video)

*All pictures and video taken with my Iphone 7 because my camera was in repair*

Last year, I went to Hokkaido for a road trip. I had a wonderful time driving 1200km around the island together with my husband. We ate a lot of local delicacies and one of it is Soup Curry.

Frankly, when I read about this dish, I was skeptical about it. I thought it's a sweet spiced broth with no punch. I was wrong, so wrong!!

We went to Samurai Soup Curry, it was one of the nearer ones to our hotel in Sapporo. Out of 10 levels of heat, I ordered heat level 7 and my husband ordered one at level 4. I thought... oh what... it's just Japanese standards, how hot can it be for a Malaysian?

Samurai's Chicken Tomato Soup Curry.
Theirs had a lot of vegetables compared to mine.
There were beans, burdock, mizuna, lily bulb on top of  what I used.

When our curry arrived, I tasted it and I choked. In my bowl of tomato base chicken soup curry, there were 6 bird's eye chilli and my husband's had 3 pieces of bird's eye chilli. It was really hot!! I couldn't drink much of the gravy, but ate everything else. My hubby's level 4 was nicely spicy for me but he said it was too spicy for him. Lesson learnt, do not to underestimate the heat tolerance of other cultures. LOL.

To cut the story short, or you can read more about it here, I missed it so much that I came home and made my own. A big thank you to No recipes for providing me a basic idea of how it's done. I made adjustments based on the flavour I remember and the end result is pretty near to Samurai's version. It's the only one I ate before, so I won't know if it's near to the other soup curry versions in Hokkaido.

I made the broth once, but our family had 3 meals of it. One meal chicken, another pork and the last meal has prawns in it. You can use fish too. Or just go with all veggies. My kids had it without any chilli and they like it. Keep any extras frozen and save it for a rainy day!

I should be using S&B curry powder but it was very very expensive. So, I made do with English style curry powder. Both should be quite near, but local Malaysian curry powder will be quite far off. If you don't mind paying for S&B, go ahead and use it. My garam masala is homemade (recipe), but you can use store bought ones. There is no fixed recipe for garam masala, and like I said, the spice in Sapporo's soup curry differs from shop to shop.

Hokkaido Soup Curry

Tasted and recreated by WendyinKK
Reference: No Recipes
Inspired by Samurai Soup Curry, Sapporo
Serves 6

1.5L water
2 to 4 Chicken legs (as needed)
400gm Pork belly (Or change to 2 more chicken legs)
500gm tomatoes + 1/2 cup water
200gm onions + 1/2 cup water

1 onion
3 garlic cloves
1 inch ginger

20gm Curry Powder (I used British type or you can try Malaysian fish curry powder (it's quite far off), S&B is way too expensive here)
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp garam masala
1.5 Tbsp dried basil

2 Tbsp light soy sauce
Salt to taste


1. Bring 1.5L water to boil.
2. Meanwhile, blend onions and tomatoes with 1/2 cup of water each. Pour both puree into the pot. Rinse the blender jug with 1 cup of water and pour it all in.
3. When it has come to a boil, put in pork, chicken and *potatoes (for topping). Add in 1 tsp salt.
4. Let it come back to a boil and lower to a simmer for 30 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, grind onion, garlic and ginger into a paste.
6. Put in 4 Tbsp of oil, or as needed into a pan, Saute the onion paste on medium low heat until fragrant and it has started to caramelise. Add in curry powder, turmeric powder and garam masala. And cook for a minute or two until it smells really fragrant.
7. Pour the paste into the simmering soup. Put some of the soup into the pan and rinse off whatever spice paste that is left and pour into the pot of soup.
8. Put in basil, light soy sauce and more salt to taste.
9. When the 30 minutes is up, remove the chicken and potato and let them cool off on a wire rack.
10. Let it continue to simmer until the  pork is tender, which may take up to 1 hour or more. Remove the pork when it's done.

Basic soup curry is done!

You can use any type of vegetable you like. The more the merrier.
Wash first, then slice. Vegetables that will be deep fried need to be air dried to make sure there's no more condensation or water on them.

Deep frying vegetables is the way it's done in Hokkaido, but if you don't want to deep fry, then just cook it the way you prefer.

Assembly.

Birds's eye chilli, as needed.
Coconut milk, as needed (I use 50ml for each portion)
Or Ketchup, as needed (I use 3 Tbsp for each portion)
Boiled quail eggs, optional, as needed.

Vegetables (make sure they are not wet)
Broccoli, Okra, Pumpkin, Yellow Capsicum, Carrot, Red Pepper, Eggplant, White or brown Shimeji Mushroom, Lotus Root, Wood Ear Fungus(soaked), Onion slices  and *Potato (cooked earlier in the broth)

1. Brush some oil over chicken and bake until the skin turns slightly golden.
2. Heat some oil and deep fry the vegetables in small batches. Fry eggplants last because they tend to brown the frying oil.
3. Blanch broccoli, wood ear fungus and white shimeji mushrooms.
4. Bash amount of chilies of choice , pour one portion soup curry into a saucepan, add bashed chillies, and bring to a boil. Add in coconut milk or ketchup, or both, if preferred.
5. Pour into serving bowl.
6. Put in chicken leg/pork chunks and nicely arrange the rest of the vegetables into the bowl.
7. Serve with steamed rice.

and I had Mizuna in this bowl

Turmeric tinted rice is made popular by Yellow Soup Curry in Sapporo. I have never tasted that, so I guessed that it's plain rice tinted yellow. I might be wrong, please correct me if you know what's in their rice.

Here's the video, my first 'fast forwarded video'.
I hope my steps are clear.

Happy cooking!