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Curry Making

incorporating Recipes and Cooking
feder1
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Curry Making

#41234

Postby feder1 » March 25th, 2017, 8:40 am

How does a commercial outfit make say a meat curry which has a rich sauce with body but where there is no visible evidence of onions?

When I make a curry, it has chopped onion in it which remains visible.

Do they use liquidised onions or powdered onions perhaps?

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redsturgeon
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Re: Curry Making

#41238

Postby redsturgeon » March 25th, 2017, 9:05 am

They make a stock sauce that they liquidise that contains quite a few onions. Here is one I use when making Korma for my son...he only likes one that tastes like a takeaway korma. I prefer to make curries from the basic spices freshly ground though and there is nothing to stop you liquidising your onion, garlic and ginger first in any recipe.

600g onions (about 6 large onions)
6 cloves of garlic
6 pieces of ginger (dice sized)
2 tablespoons of tomato puree/
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoons turmeric
1.5 teaspoons chilli powder
1.5 teaspoons ground coriander
1.5 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoons garam masala
3 teaspoons vegetable oil

Add the onions garlic and ginger to about 800ml water and boil for 30 minutes.

Add the rest of the ingredients and boils for another ten minutes then puree.

You can use this as a base sauce and add to whatever ingredient you wish

feder1
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Re: Curry Making

#41242

Postby feder1 » March 25th, 2017, 9:26 am

What a super reply!
Thanks.

77ss
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Re: Curry Making

#41250

Postby 77ss » March 25th, 2017, 10:27 am

redsturgeon wrote:They make a stock sauce that they liquidise that contains quite a few onions. Here is one I use when making Korma for my son...he only likes one that tastes like a takeaway korma. I prefer to make curries from the basic spices freshly ground though and there is nothing to stop you liquidising your onion, garlic and ginger first in any recipe.


Add the onions garlic and ginger to about 800ml water and boil for 30 minutes.

Add the rest of the ingredients and boils for another ten minutes then puree.

You can use this as a base sauce and add to whatever ingredient you wish


What a fantastic reply. I'm going to have to try this!

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Re: Curry Making

#41253

Postby TonyB » March 25th, 2017, 10:39 am

Depends what you mean by 'commercial outfit'. If you mean your local indian restaurant, then the use of a base sauce, as per RedSturgeon is the way they do it. However, if you mean as produced for a takeaway supermarket curry, its likely that there will be a range of hydrocolloids and other emulsifiers added to keep the sauce stable. during storage and transit.

TonyB

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Re: Curry Making

#41264

Postby poundcoin » March 25th, 2017, 11:55 am

Must try boiling the onions , have never done that as have always fried the onions first together with a stick of celery chopped .
Otherwise the ingredients I use are more or less the same except I use more garam masala and more tumeric and no coriander or paprika .
Don't add salt per se but do use 4 t spoons of instant onion gravy salts and a pint of boiling water for the liquid content . Not sure what type of curry mine is but usually tastes ok.
Left overs we heat up the next day and pour over a cheesy baked potato .

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Re: Curry Making

#41479

Postby DiamondEcho » March 26th, 2017, 2:55 pm

redsturgeon wrote:there is nothing to stop you liquidising your onion, garlic and ginger first in any recipe.


This is what we do, and it's common in Asia these days, whereas in earlier times they'd have used a pestle and mortar. We put onion, garlic, ginger, chilli and similar ingredients into a blender and chop to a paste. Sometimes it helps if you coarsely chop some of such items before, so the blade has flat surfaces the blades can hit.
My wife was cooking last night and made such a paste, and even took it further by blending in 4 stems of lemongrass, the whiter end, not the woodier green sections, + chop off 1/4cm of the base, that's woody as hell too. That was then course chopped, and I was rather doubtful it would blend to a paste. It did seem to come out feeling slightly gritty, but that texture went away in the cooking.

The other ingredients used for thickening are coconut milk/cream, and also nuts, for which ground peanuts work fine. Both of those add richness too.

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Re: Curry Making

#41482

Postby DiamondEcho » March 26th, 2017, 3:15 pm

Oh, and one more thing ;) Sometimes I cook a curry, or casserole/stew and the 'gravy' is just too thin for me. This is a challenge if the ingredients are done, ie you're using good beef, chicken, seafood and reducing the gravy in situ would overcook your star ingredients. I've used two work-arounds for this:
- Use a ladle to remove gravy to a second pan, put on a high heat and boil it while stirring quickly. A frying pan works very well, max surface/volume ratio I imagine. When reduced, add back to the main pot.
- If things are looking woeful, I've done the above and added a teaspoon or two of cornflour paste to ^ and cooked it off, then added back to the main pot.

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Re: Curry Making

#41529

Postby PrincessB » March 26th, 2017, 7:28 pm

Hi poundcoin

Must try boiling the onions


Something that works for me could be called 'boilifrying' which works well for onions. Having a proper extractor fan that vents from above the hob is very useful for this.

Chop onions to required size and throw cold into a cold wok/pan/pressure cooker or other large dish.
Add water to cover
Splosh in sufficient oil to taste (still cold at this point)
Turn heat to high and turn extractor on.

Depending on the power of your hob, you've now got a goodly amount of time to prep spices or similar while the pan of onions comes to the boil. Once boiling throttle back and continue prep while keeping an eye on the water level.

After a bit, the water diminish and you need to pay more attention as the oil is still there and getting hotter. Reduce heat further and do a fair amount of stirring until you've got the brown you desire.

It works for me.

B.

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Re: Curry Making

#43477

Postby Brava21 » April 4th, 2017, 10:32 am

Hi John

Thank you so much for posting this excellent recipe. I confess that I had never before made a curry using the method of cooking up a shedload of onions, as they do in takeways. I think that I probably thought it would be messy and incredibly time consuming, but when I saw your recipe I decided to give it a go.

I cooked it exactly to your recipe, other than adding a bit more chili powder as Mr B and I like fairly hot curries and after I had portioned it up threw some prawns into some of it and served up with rice and naan for a late lunch on Sunday. Mr B announced that it was ‘one of the nicest curries I have tasted, ever’ and was massively impressed by its authenticity to the takeaway variety (as was I).

So, thanks to you, I am currently enjoying Master Chef status in our house :D

… which leaves me to cheekily ask…got any more where that came from? I need to keep this up now!

Thanks again
Brava

tea42
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Re: Curry Making

#43482

Postby tea42 » April 4th, 2017, 10:51 am

I am spoilt, never go further than Goring on Thames to the grocers where one of the sisters sells this stuff: http://www.swaadish.com/#&panel1-5

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Re: Curry Making

#43495

Postby didds » April 4th, 2017, 11:17 am

Just to check... when you all refer to "takeaway curry" do you mjean

1) you phone your local indian restaurant and order a curry to take home from their kitchen
2)the supermarket "curry meal for two" in a plastic bag containing a curry or two, rice and nan bread ?

didds

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Re: Curry Making

#43547

Postby Brava21 » April 4th, 2017, 2:10 pm

Didds - I meant option 1 as set out in your email. We've tried supermarket offerings but really don't like them; the suces are never as spicy as indicated on the packaging, the bits of chicken are often totally uniform and a bit tasteless (preformed I suppose), the naan breads are never as good as the separately packaged ones you can buy in supermarkets and the onion bhajees are like plastic.

(But if you know of a decent supermarket offering please let me know!)

Brava

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Re: Curry Making

#43565

Postby redsturgeon » April 4th, 2017, 3:05 pm

The supermarkets are never really as good, especially not when it comes to naan.

As to what next in the curry department. The basic sauce is meant only as a starting point for your imagination.

Add peppers chillies and sliced onion for a jalfreizi or almonds, coconut and cream for a korma. Adding a good bit of fresh coriander also makes a tasty addition to most curries.

Of course this is very ersatz compared to what you can do with proper spicing. One of my favourites for a very quick and easy curry is a Goan prawn curry courtesy of Madhur Jaffrey.

Make a paste of 1/4 tsp turmeric, 2 tblsp coriander, 1 tsp cumin, 1 tblsp paprika, 1 tblsp lemon juice, 3/4 tsp salt and 100ml water.
Heat some oil and throw in 1/2tsp mustard seeds until they start popping, add shallots and garlic and the spice paste and cook for about ten minutes.
Add coconut milk and prawns, bring to a simmer and cook prawn until they are just opaque.
This can be cooked in about 20 minutes total and is delicious...you can also add or use other fish.

John

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Re: Curry Making

#43568

Postby swill453 » April 4th, 2017, 3:14 pm

Brava21 wrote:We've tried supermarket offerings but really don't like them; the suces are never as spicy as indicated on the packaging, the bits of chicken are often totally uniform and a bit tasteless (preformed I suppose), the naan breads are never as good as the separately packaged ones you can buy in supermarkets and the onion bhajees are like plastic.

(But if you know of a decent supermarket offering please let me know!)

The Aldi "bag" at £3.49 is worth trying. Not the same as "real" curry, but at that price you can't complain much. No bhajees though, just 2 x curry/rice/naan.

Scott.

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Re: Curry Making

#43742

Postby saechunu » April 5th, 2017, 10:49 am

redsturgeon wrote:As to what next in the curry department. The basic sauce is meant only as a starting point for your imagination.

Add peppers chillies and sliced onion for a jalfreiziAdding a good bit of fresh coriander also makes a tasty addition to most curries.


Just to clarify, I assume this should say "add to", ie. those additional ingredients are fried and then the precooked stock sauce is added to them.

I plan to try this base sauce. We're very regular curry cookers and eaters but very rarely get to eat takeaways, so I'm quite interested to try this stock sauce out - thanks for posting this.

Curries are funny things. They're some of the easiest recipes to cook (largely one-pot cooking) and get good results from, but perhaps because of the proliferation of takeaways and curry houses it seems few people ever bother to cook them themselves. I often cook curries for guests and they usually go down a storm, with a very high results:effort ratio. Silken Chicken from Madhur Jaffrey's Quick and Easy Indian Cookery is a good example. That whole book is full of easy but great tasting recipes, and my copy of it is suitable battered and splashed with the evidence of many years' hard usage.

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Re: Curry Making

#43767

Postby redsturgeon » April 5th, 2017, 12:10 pm

saechunu wrote:
redsturgeon wrote:As to what next in the curry department. The basic sauce is meant only as a starting point for your imagination.

Add peppers chillies and sliced onion for a jalfreiziAdding a good bit of fresh coriander also makes a tasty addition to most curries.


Just to clarify, I assume this should say "add to", ie. those additional ingredients are fried and then the precooked stock sauce is added to them.

I plan to try this base sauce. We're very regular curry cookers and eaters but very rarely get to eat takeaways, so I'm quite interested to try this stock sauce out - thanks for posting this.

Curries are funny things. They're some of the easiest recipes to cook (largely one-pot cooking) and get good results from, but perhaps because of the proliferation of takeaways and curry houses it seems few people ever bother to cook them themselves. I often cook curries for guests and they usually go down a storm, with a very high results:effort ratio. Silken Chicken from Madhur Jaffrey's Quick and Easy Indian Cookery is a good example. That whole book is full of easy but great tasting recipes, and my copy of it is suitable battered and splashed with the evidence of many years' hard usage.


You are correct. Add the sauce to the other ingredients at the appropriate time.

+1 on Madjur J's recipes.

John

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Re: Curry Making

#44015

Postby Brava21 » April 6th, 2017, 11:55 am

Scott - thank you for the tip on the Aldi curry. Yes, at that price it is well worth a punt and I will have a look next time I am near one (no Aldi near me, but there is one a mile or so away from work).

John, thank you for the further tips. I will very definitely be making your sauce again and taking it down the jalfrezi route! Yum.

Brava

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Re: Curry Making

#44053

Postby Fromdusktildawn » April 6th, 2017, 1:35 pm

There is a great book called 'The Curry Secret' that is based on this idea of a base onion/garlic/ginger base to which you add the flavourings to make whatever curry variation you like such as jalfrezi, korma etc. It covers starters, rice and side dishes as well. I have a very old (curry) stained copy which looks a bit old fashioned these days but it does include a superb recipe for keema peas which includes minced lamb and garden peas (you can even use frozen peas). The recipe for pillau rice is outstanding too.

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Re: Curry Making

#44096

Postby saechunu » April 6th, 2017, 2:58 pm

Fromdusktildawn wrote:There is a great book called 'The Curry Secret' that is based on this idea of a base onion/garlic/ginger base to which you add the flavourings to make whatever curry variation you like such as jalfrezi, korma etc. It covers starters, rice and side dishes as well. I have a very old (curry) stained copy which looks a bit old fashioned these days but it does include a superb recipe for keema peas which includes minced lamb and garden peas (you can even use frozen peas). The recipe for pillau rice is outstanding too.


Yum, Keema Peas! I'll be cooking that tomorrow to an MJ recipe from her book I mentioned above.


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