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Hello, friends especially foodies!

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How are you doing today? I hope you are all doing well!
Today, I want to share another cooking experience with you. This time, I tried making Bumbu Bali beef, an Indonesian dish made with beef and a rich blend of spices.
I followed a recipe but decided to make a few adjustments to suit my taste. Well, guess what happened? WKWKWK! 😂 My Bumbu Bali beef turned into Spicy Spices Beef!
Let me tell you the story behind this cooking adventure.

🥩 Preparing the Ingredients
For this recipe, I used 500 grams of beef tenderloin. I also made a few changes to the original recipe, including replacing tamarind water with fresh tomatoes.
Here are the ingredients I used.
Ingredients
500 g beef tenderloin
10 shallots
6 cloves of garlic
1 piece of ginger
10 large red chilies
10 bird's-eye chilies
2 beef tomatoes
2 stalks of lemongrass, bruised
2 kaffir lime leaves
2 tablespoons of sweet soy sauce
4 tablespoons of sugar
1 teaspoon of salt
Approximately 300 ml of water
Cooking oil as needed
The original recipe used tamarind water and 800 ml of water, but I replaced the tamarind with two tomatoes and reduced the water to approximately 300 ml. I also increased the sugar from two tablespoons to four tablespoons because I wanted a sweeter flavor.
However, I kept the amount of beef the same.
And here comes the interesting part: I used ten large red chilies and ten bird's-eye chilies! 🌶️🌶️
Yes, that was quite a lot of chilies, wasn't it? WKWKWK!

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👩‍🍳 Step 1: Preparing the Ingredients

First, I prepared all the ingredients. I washed the beef and cut it into smaller pieces so that it would cook more easily.
I also prepared the shallots, garlic, ginger, chilies, tomatoes, lemongrass, and kaffir lime leaves.
Since I wanted the spices to blend well together, I decided to grind the shallots, garlic, ginger, large red chilies, and bird's-eye chilies together.
Looking back, perhaps blending all those chilies together was the beginning of my spicy adventure! 😂

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🧄 Step 2: Blending the Spices

Next, I blended the shallots, garlic, ginger, large red chilies, and bird's-eye chilies into a spice paste.
Unlike the original recipe, which called for adding the bird's-eye chilies whole near the end of cooking, I blended them together with the other spices.
This meant that their heat would spread throughout the sauce instead of remaining concentrated in individual chilies.
At the time, I wasn't thinking too much about that. I just wanted the spices to blend nicely and give the beef a rich flavor.
Little did I know that my beef would become much spicier than I expected! WKWKWK! 🌶️

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🍳 Step 3: Sautéing the Spice Paste plus Adding the Tomatoes and Seasonings

After blending the ingredients, I heated some cooking oil in a pan and sautéed the spice paste with the lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves.
I cooked everything until fragrant.
The aroma of the spices filled the kitchen, and it was a promising start. I love the smell of freshly sautéed Indonesian spices because they make a dish feel so comforting.
Once the spices were fragrant, I added the beef and stirred everything together so that the meat was coated with the spice paste.

Here was another change I made to the original recipe.
Instead of using tamarind water, I added two beef tomatoes. I thought the tomatoes would give the sauce a different flavor and combine nicely with the other spices.
I also added the sweet soy sauce, salt, and four tablespoons of sugar.

Then I poured in approximately 300 ml of water.
The original recipe called for 800 ml, so I reduced the amount considerably. I wanted to cook the beef with less liquid and let the sauce develop as it simmered.
As the tomatoes softened and the spices mixed with the beef, the sauce began to take shape.
Everything looked promising at this stage!

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🥩 Step 4: Letting the Beef Simmer

After mixing everything together, I let the beef cook until the meat was tender and the sauce had reduced.
Cooking beef takes patience because the meat needs enough time to become soft and absorb the flavors of the spices.
Since I used less water than the original recipe, I kept an eye on the pan to make sure there was enough liquid for the beef to cook properly.
Eventually, the sauce became thicker and coated the beef nicely.
The dish was beginning to look delicious, but the real test was still waiting for me: the taste!

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🌶️ Step 6: The Unexpected Result!

And finally, my Bumbu Bali beef was ready!
Looking at the finished dish, you might think it was a successful attempt at recreating the original recipe.
Well, it was successful in one way: I managed to cook the beef! WKWKWK! 😂
But the flavor was another story.
It was much spicier than I expected!
I had used ten large red chilies and ten bird's-eye chilies, blending them all into the spice paste. Although I reduced the number of bird's-eye chilies from the original recipe, the heat was still quite strong.
The chilies had taken center stage, making the dish more like Spicy Spices Beef than the Bumbu Bali beef I had originally intended to make.
I had also replaced the tamarind with tomatoes and increased the sugar to four tablespoons, but the result wasn't quite what I had imagined.
Sometimes, cooking teaches us that changing a few ingredients doesn't always produce the flavor we expect.
And sometimes, we end up with a funny story to share instead! 😂🌶️

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💑 Cooking and Sharing the Meal

One nice thing about this cooking adventure was sharing the experience with my husband.
Cooking at home isn't always about creating perfect dishes. Sometimes, it is about trying something new, experimenting with ingredients, and enjoying the process together.
Even when the result isn't exactly what we expected, we still get a meal to share and a story to remember.
And this one certainly gave us a memorable story!

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💭 What I Learned from This Cooking Experiment

After this experience, I realized that the type and quantity of chilies can make a big difference in the final flavor of a dish.
For my next attempt, I might reduce the number of bird's-eye chilies further and use more deseeded curly red chilies instead.
I could also try adding candlenuts to create a richer spice paste and adjusting the palm sugar to achieve a better balance of flavors.
Of course, these are ideas for my next cooking experiment. I haven't tried those adjustments yet, so I cannot say whether they will produce the flavor I'm looking for.
Cooking is a learning process, and I believe we become better at it by trying, tasting, and adjusting our recipes.
Who knows? Maybe my next Bumbu Bali beef will finally have the balance of flavors I want!
But for now, I will always remember this dish as my very own Spicy Spices Beef! WKWKWK! 😂🌶️

💙 Final Thoughts
Not every cooking experiment turns out exactly as planned, and that's perfectly fine.
Sometimes, a recipe gives us a delicious meal. Other times, it gives us a lesson, a funny memory, and inspiration to try again.
My Bumbu Bali beef might have been too spicy for my expectations, but the experience was still worth sharing.

Have you ever tried cooking a dish and ended up with something completely different from what you expected?
I'd love to hear your stories in the comments!

Thanks for reading my article! If you enjoyed my article, please upvote, reblog, follow me, and stay tuned for more CRAFT things from me!

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All of the pictures were taken with a Samsung A52 5G Android phone.

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A bit about the author

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