Just asking. I got out of the habit of making them, but they are so easy, tasty, cheap, satisfying in cold weather and nutritious I think I will start making them more often.
So many ways to do it though. How do you do it?
This is the recipe I’ve used for years.
Not sure if you’re looking for recipes or general techniques. The recipe @commasense posted is a good general one, though sometimes I find the cream or yogurt or coconut milk based curries a little, not heavy exactly, but for a change of pace I like a nice vindaloo, which is free of coconut milk and dairy (except maybe ghee). It’s tomato-forward and spicy. Here’s a good vindaloo recipe I’ve made:
Technique-wise, I like to start with whole spices, toast and grind them to make curry powder from scratch.
I sometimes make my own ghee by browning butter and straining through a coffee filter to remove the milk solids.
And I start out with more diced onions than I think I’ll need, and sauté them in a pan, stirring, for a good while until they get good and brown and carmelized.
I’m just asking. I make about twelve different recipes myself, revolving between them. But I tend to make it much more when it is cold outside.
Recipes. Techniques. Preferences. Anecdotes. Your call.
This is the basic recipe for curries on the red-to-yellow spectrum that never fails me:
- 6 cloves of garlic, peeled
- 1 inch of ginger root, peeled
- 4 hot chilis (more if you like the heat)
- 1 medium onion, half diced and half cut into half-rings
- 2 tbsp ghee or clarified butter
- 2 tbsp of curry spices (separate recipe)
- 1 small can (1 tbsp) of tomato paste
- 2 lb of meat (chicken, lamb, …) in coarse pieces or vegetables
- 1 can (1 lb) of diced tomatoes
- 2 stalks of cilantro (optional)
- Mix garlic, ginger, and chilis with a little water and grind to a paste
- Heat ghee in a large pan. Fry the onions for about 2 min.
- Add curry spices and cook for another minute
- Add chili paste and cook for another 2 minutes
- Add tomato paste and cook for another minute
- Add meat or vegetables and fry for 5 minutes
- Add diced tomatoes and simmer for 45 minutes. Stir occasionally or add a little water. Adjust color with curcuma or paprika.
- Before serving, sprinkle with cilantro leaves
For the curry mix, my current favorite is this one. A little more complicated, but since you can prepare it in advance and store for several months, that’s generally no problem.
My standard recipe is to go to the freezer, pull out a box of frozen Trader Joe’s Butter Chicken or Chicken Tikka and nuke until ready.
While I do love coconut milk in curries, a less sickly way to get creaminess is to add red lentils, which if left simmering for 30+ minutes, collapse to create a very savoury sauce. Good for tomato-based curries.
I let the Maesri Thai curry paste (various types, I haven’t had a bad one) do the heavy lifting. With it, coconut milk, probably chicken breast or thighs, lots of veggies like onions/shallots, hot chiles, bell peppers, maybe some mushrooms or asparagus or zucchini. But I have 2 aces up my sleeve. Some tomato wedges added right at the end so they just barely soften. And quartered Thai eggplants, the little green golfball-sized guys. They add a wonderful squeaky texture. Served over jasmine rice, garnish with cilantro, chile sauce or oil and fish sauce.
My general tip for many curries (from a Delhi native) is to use a nutribullet-type blender to puree the onion, garlic and ginger, it gives the sauce that “grainy” texture.
One recipe that I always recommend to people is Rick Stein’s chicken passanda.
Hmmm….very interesting idea. Red lentils in a curry sound delicious and I have red lentils on hand. Will definitely try sometime.
The bonus is, you can’t really go wrong, as you’re aiming to ‘overcook’ them in the first place…
When I’m feeling like putting a little effort in, I’ll make a sauce from unflavored Greek yogurt and coconut cream and then add an envelope of pre-mixed spices (there are several Indian grocery stores in my area). Brown some chicken or lamb in the frying pan. Mix the meat, sauce, and vegetables (some combination of broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, onions, peas, and peppers) together in a baking dish and cook it up in the oven.
When I’m feeling less ambitious, I’ll use a jar of sauce instead of making a batch.
An easier, possibly less good option is to buy a jar of garlic ginger paste. Any Indian grocer has them, possibly in the fridge. Here, many mainstream grocers do too.
Should curry be spicy? Because I’ve made a few curries and they have all been underwhelming.
Odd, I tend to think of curries as hot-weather food.
Cape Malay curry starts by tempering dry spices in sunflower oil - fennel, cumin and coriander seeds are characteristic, but anything goes really - I add a few cloves, yellow mustard seed, green cardamom pods, allspice, nigella, grains of paradise and whole white peppercorns. Turmeric, galangal and cayenne powder go in now, too.
It’s up to you if you want to use these dry spices whole or ground, whole is traditional. You could also use a premade masala powder instead, but that should still be tempered.
Then onto the fresh stuff - chopped onions & fresh chillies, garlic, ginger (usually as garlic&ginger paste) - that all gets added to the oil and fried until the onions soften .
Then meat, that has been dusted in seasoned flour, is browned in the same tempering oil (maybe add some more oil at this stage). if I’m adding potatoes, they’d be parcooked and then added just after the meat. Tomato paste goes in now if it’s being used, as well.
Add some stock, as well as a couple bay and/or curry leaves, a couple of whole cinnamon sticks, a handful of raisins/sultanas and/or chopped dried apricots, fresh lemon zest or preserved lemons and naartjie (tangerine) peel, and then whatever other veg like legumes, tomatoes, butternut, spinach etc. are going in, in whatever order and timing makes sense for them to all finish cooking at the more-or-less the same time.
Simmer until nearly done, then final touches like chopped fresh herbs - dhania (coriander leaves), parsley, mint - and boiled eggs are added just before serving. This is also when you can add a second round of tempered spices, but that’s not common in Cape Malay cooking. More common is to stir in some blatjang (dried fruit chutney).
You can also fish out the cinnamon sticks, cloves and bay leaves, but we usually don’t, it’s up to individual diners to pick these out.
Cape Malay curries tend to be not all that spicy. A balance of flavours is preferred, with sweetness from the dried fruits making it fairly different from other curries I’ve had, like Indian, Nepali or Thai.
I think it is more the pureed onion that creates that texture but garlic and ginger paste is a good time-saver (though nothing beats fresh in my opinion)
Heat can be adjusted fairly reliably and I don’t think it has to play a major part. What is important is getting plenty of aromatics in there.
Don’t be shy with the spices generally, I’ve never had anyone say “you’ve put too much garlic or ginger in here!”
If you are getting a recipe from a book they tend to under-estimate the amounts required and I tend to go for at least 50% more than they recommend (apart from cloves, a little cloves goes a long way).
So if they are underwhelming I’d suggest upping the spices by 50% each time until you find your sweet spot.
Just to be pedantic (because that’s what we do here), vindaloo was originally called vindalho (veen-d-alyoo), which is a portmanteau of the Portuguese carne de vinha d’ alhos, which translates to “meat in garlic and wine marinade”. The Goan dish uses vinegar instead of wine. I tone it down when I make it, as it’s usually blisteringly hot.
It really depends on the curry. For South Asian curries, there is typically a noticeable amount of heat to them. I work a lot in the South Asian community, and the meals I have there are definitely hot compared to (most) American meals. Some of my Eastern European colleagues can’t eat them, as its too spicy for them, but I generally find them a medium spice to my spice tolerance. That said, there’s nothing ever I’ve eaten that is labeled as “curry” on the menus or signs, but they are all what most Westerners categorize as a curry. Stuff like butter chicken/murgh makhani will be fairly mild – and that’s what most people not used to heat gravitate to, but the chana masala (chickpeas), palak paneer (spinach-paneer cheese), methi corn (fenugreek leaf corn), dal (lentils or other pulses), bindhi (okra), etc., will have a zing to them.
You can sometimes even find garlic-ginger cubes in a bag in the frozen section. My neighborhood isn’t remotely South Asian, but two years ago I found my local grocery carries them in the freezer section. I didn’t even know such a thing existed, only being used to the jarred stuff. I find the frozen version livelier than the jarred version, which I actually try to avoid using, because it tastes so much different than freshly grated/chopped/pulverized ginger and garlic. But I always try to have one or the other around in a pinch (though I usually have fresh ginger and garlic in the kitchen.)
Very little of the Indian food I eat has coconut, as I tend to go around in Gujarati and Punjabi communities and Mughlai cuisine. Coconut (and stuff like idli, dosa, sambar) is what you’d see more in Southern Indian food. Coconut is definitely not necessary for a curry. Probably 95% of the curries I eat and almost 100% of the ones I make do not use it. I’ll use it more when I’m in the mood for Thai or other Southeast Asian curries (which are a different beast, despite sharing the name.)
Japanese curry is a comfort food to me, and it’s easy as hell to make, as all you have to do is get yourself a hand on some Japanese curry roux cubes. It is kind of the Japanese take on the English take of South Asian curries. It’s quite mild (even the extra hot varieties I find to be rather easy on the palate), and all you do is cook up your protein and veggies (typically roughly chopped potato, carrot, and onion) in a volume of water, add the curry cubes at the end, and let it thicken and stew for a few more minutes. Serve over rice. It’s quite mellow, flavor-wise, compared to any of the curries of South or Southeast Asia, but it’s a quick and satisfying stew, especially during the fall/winter months.
Most of my curries start off as plenty of thinly sliced onions in some mixture of olive oil, coconut oil, butter or ghee. Since they are barely identifiable in the final product, I don’t purée them. I do individually toast most of the spices, of which there are many. My Gujarati friends swear by curry leaves, though I find the difference subtle. Ginger and garlic paste was a revelation to me - never used to use it; fresh is both better and worse in the same way pickled vs. fresh jalapeños are on nachos. Whether I just use whole spices or put them in the pestle depends on the curry - vindaloo should be spicy and requires grinding, which increases spice and is essential for marinades. I don’t know what “grains of paradise” are but probably call them something different.
If your curry is too mild, you could go the easy route and use a spicier premixed curry powder. If you want something better, add lots of black pepper, hot mustard, cayenne pepper, chili powder, chilies (heat varies enormously), vinegar, Szechuan pepper or hot sauce (authenticity varies depending on the country, but all of these work). A little salt or sugar can go a long way to bring out the flavour.