Too lazy to really cook, but too gourmet for instant food? Our reporter Go finds a solution.

Flavorful, filling, and warm, curry is one of the absolute best comfort foods. Unfortunately, the times when we’ve got the strongest cravings for comforting cuisine are usually also the times when we’re feeling lazy, which puts us in a bit of a bind.

Sure, you can buy pouches of instant, microwavable curry, but they don’t taste quite as good as making the dish from a proper block of curry roux. Luckily, though, we’ve now got a way to get legitimate curry without even having to turn on the stove.

The box for Range de Curry (“range” being what Japan calls a microwave) describes it as “a magical container,” though the magic here is of the physics and engineering type, not the arcane. It’s still a unique-looking piece of kitchen equipment, though, looking like the nebulous design intersection of a coffee cup, cooking pot, and gravy boat.

You also get a spoon and recipe book as part of the 1,200-yen (US$11) package, and we immediately flipped to the page with the recipe for beef curry.

You’ll need:
● Beef (40 grams/1.4 ounces)
● Onions (20 grams/0.7 ounces)
● Carrots (15 grams/0.5 ounces)
● Potatoes (20 grams/0.7 ounces)
● Cherry tomatoes (2)
● Curry roux
● Water (120 milliliters/4.1 ounces)

Chop all of the vegetables thinly and toss them into the Range de Curry bowl, along with the meat. The recipe isn’t too specific on the amount of curry roux to use, so we broke off a roughly half-palm-sized block and added it to the other ingredients.

Then all that’s left to do is pour in the water…

…and pop the container in the microwave.

▼ You don’t even have to put a lid on it!

The directions say to microwave the curry for five minutes if you’re using a 500-watt microwave, but you can cut that down to four minutes and 30 seconds if you’ve got a 600-watt setting.

When the timer went off, we pulled the Range de Curry out of the microwave, and to be honest, initially it was a little underwhelming, visually speaking.

But after a few stirs with the included spoon…

…our ultra-easy curry transformed into something with restaurant-quality mouthwatering good looks!

Curry is like pudding, though, in that the proof is in the eating. This time, taste-testing duties fell to our reporter Go Hatori. So, how’s it taste, Go?

▼ “It’s awesome!”

Yep, just as promised, Range de Curry let us make full-fledged, non-instant curry with the minimum amount of effort. Everything was thoroughly cooked, and though the carrots were just a touch on the firm side, that was the only nitpick Go could make. As he chowed down, he took another look at the box, which diagrams how the contours of the pot help it reflect and retain microwave heat for quicker cooking.

Before long he’d cleaned his plate, and happy and full, he crawled into his hallucinatingly comfy Uniqlo bedsheets to dream of his next curry meal, secure in the knowledge that it would only be a few minutes away the next time the craving hit.

Related: Range de Curry official website
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Follow Casey on Twitter, where he likes an admittedly ridiculous amount of carrots in his curry.