[Food] How do you generally cook your curry..from scratch, curry paste or sauce?

[marlowe]

Just wondered how people on here generally cook their home made curries? I always used to do from scratch using individual spices then for sake of convenience started using curry pastes. I never use jars of sauce as that seems to be going too far. Have recently considered going back to using the spices as I think the pastes aren't as good as they used to be.

 

[thedonkeycentrehalf]

I don't eat curry myself but Mrs DCH now uses spice kits from Everything Spice. They sell at Shoreham and Steyning markets and have just launched an online shop. Each kit is £3 and makes six curries.

I can recommend their Scotch Bonnet sauce - great flavour and nice but not overpowering heat.

 

[juliant]

Get yourself a copy of the curry secret boot by Kris Dhillon. We haven't looked back since.

It shows you how to cook up a base curry sauce which you can then freeze. Then simply use that with the recipes in the book. They are great curries. Even better when made with homemade naan bread !

 

[Albion in the north]

Always from scratch. Get the basic spices in. Madhur Jaffrey, Rick Stein, Hairy Bikers and Jamie Oliver. We make at least 2 a week in our house.

 

[Jesus Gul]

Step 1 - Phone the Agra Tandoori

 

[Cheshire Cat]

Scratch every time

Cumin, coriander, turmeric, ginger, garlic, black pepper, garam masala, dried chillies. Possibly some cardamom seeds.

Although I do use ground spices. Grinding your own is better and gives a better flavour,but life is too short for that amount of detail.

I always think the sauces and pastes include sugar somewhere, and too much preservatives. Mango chutneys tend to be ridiculously sweet, and lime pickles blows the roof of my mouth off.

There is no time saving to using sauces either. Just mix everything with some tomatoes and onions and fry.

https://www.mattas.co.uk/

 

[BensGrandad]

Get yourself a copy of the curry secret boot by Kris Dhillon. We haven't looked back since.

It shows you how to cook up a base curry sauce which you can then freeze. Then simply use that with the recipes in the book. They are great curries. Even better when made with homemade naan bread !

That is exactly what I do and the curry sauce is brilliant, success every time. The book is very cheap from Amazon.

 

[Blues Rock DJ]

no take-away option ?

 

[Geoffbn2]

From scratch, get large (100gm) packs of spices from taj or similar shops able to make multiple curries with these my favorite is Fish Bhuna

 

[AmexRuislip]

Wife's a chef, so we have curry from scratch

 

[Cheeky Monkey]

Always from scratch and using Sainsburys white label 30p chopped plum tomatoes.

Why you'd buy a jar packed with preservatives and all manner of shit when you can make your own healthy sauce in a couple of minutes...

 

[wakeytom]

Get yourself a copy of the curry secret boot by Kris Dhillon. We haven't looked back since.

It shows you how to cook up a base curry sauce which you can then freeze. Then simply use that with the recipes in the book. They are great curries. Even better when made with homemade naan bread !

Just bought this on your suggestion - had a look on Amazon at some of the pages and it looks very good and easy to follow. Looking forward to trying it now

 

[Wrong-Direction]

From scratch every time, like most meals

Sent from my SM-A310F using Tapatalk

 

[The Antikythera Mechanism]

Shemins products are amazing

https://shemins.com/

 

[Hillian1]

That is exactly what I do and the curry sauce is brilliant, success every time. The book is very cheap from Amazon.

Erm, I sent you the book via a PDF.

 

[BensGrandad]

Erm, I sent you the book via a PDF.

Yes you did, thank you and very much appreciated, so I bought my daughter in law a copy on Amazon as she saw it and thought it was good, thats how I know it is cheap.

 

[Hillian1]

Go on YouTube and look for Al's Kitchen.

Brilliant.

 

[redoubtable seagull]

Another recommendation for the Curry Secret book, which I think I read about on NSC last year. I don’t use any other Indian food cookbook now.

 

[cunning fergus]

Scratch every time

Cumin, coriander, turmeric, ginger, garlic, black pepper, garam masala, dried chillies. Possibly some cardamom seeds.

Although I do use ground spices. Grinding your own is better and gives a better flavour,but life is too short for that amount of detail.

I always think the sauces and pastes include sugar somewhere, and too much preservatives. Mango chutneys tend to be ridiculously sweet, and lime pickles blows the roof of my mouth off.

There is no time saving to using sauces either. Just mix everything with some tomatoes and onions and fry.

https://www.mattas.co.uk/

You are completely correct however you are missing one essential trick of the trade........toasting the spices before you grind.

This is the most important process on any scratch curry, without toasting the spices you will simply not get the authentic curry taste.

Many “scratch” curry recipes omit this step, I picked it up off mumsnet.........only then will you reach the promised land.

My own preference is to cook the curry (of whatever variety) in a slow cooker, keeping the lid on for the first 3 hours or so creates plenty of liquid which can be soaked up buy introducing lentils. The lentils over time break down completely creating an unctuously thick sauce.

Take the lid off for the last hour or so thicken it up, and consume with a home made cauliflower/spinach bhaji, chapati, mini poppadums and basmati rice.

 

[Mortdecai]

I used the recipes from ’The Curry Secret’ and they were superb. Recently, however, I bought an Anova sous vide machine so now I just put a Pataks spicy masala sauce in a bag with my meat etc. vacuum seal it and then it’s 60-120 mins at 60c and it wastes great.