Homemade kare-pan (curry bread)!

This weekend saw me blitzing through content provided by TabiEats' YouTube channel, starting with their vending machine restaurant review, and eventually leading to their — and others' — curry bun recipes.

I love the curry buns one can find in the Toronto-area Chinese bakeries, but end up generally disappointed at the lack of vegetable matter (it's usually just minced onion) and skimpiness of the filling in the ones I've tried. They're delicious, but more bun than curry. So, seeing that recipes varied widely, I decided to make up a "small" batch (it's still an awful lot) of my Japanese-style curry, replacing the chunks of stewing beef with ground beef.

So my new quantities for the curry are:

• ½ package of S&B Foods Golden Curry Sauce Mix Mild in the 240g size
• 2 small shallots, minced
• 1 small yellow onion, minced
• 1 lb. lean ground beef
• 1 finely chopped, small potato
• 2 small carrots, diced small
• 227g mushrooms, sliced
• frozen peas
• ¼ seeded, finely chopped shepherd pepper

The dough recipe I based mine on is Closet Cooking's Kare Pan recipe, halving the amount of sugar called for (I don't care for the overly-sweet buns some Asian bakeries offer, and wanted to err on the side of caution), using vegan margarine in place of the butter, and adding both a tablespoon of vital wheat gluten to the dough to boost the protein content in a dairy- and egg-free fashion and two tablespoons of turmeric for its anti-inflammatory properties (I'm still trying to kick a cold I came down with over a week ago) and to give it the yellow colour I've come to associate with Asian bakeries' buns. I also am out of panko, so the breading step has been omitted entirely so far.

Yesterday saw me baking two buns. I liked them, but found them much dryer than I prefer. Today, I heated up my skillet, poured in some oil and fried another couple. The first of those is pictured above and — if anything — they're even more delicious than they look! The dough fries with a finely-bubbled texture and the filling is exactly the way I like my Japanese curry!

So, basically, I'm going to be making delicious Japanese-style Hot Pockets for the rest of my lunches this week.