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Anonymous
BIR curry advice please 2017-08-09 05:17:40 Post No. 9281144
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BIR curry advice please 2017-08-09 05:17:40 Post No. 9281144
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Trying to improve my British Indian curries. Seems like I run into the same problem everytime.
I'm making the curry base by frying my spices in ghee for a few seconds and then adding grated onion. I'm using vidalia onions and red shallots. After that cooks down I add crushed garlic and ginger. My dry spices are cumin seeds, cardamom pods, cinnamon sticks, cloves, peppercorns, ground coriander and fenugreek.
It seems like my curry always has an unpleasant "bite" to it that I never taste in other curries. I wouldn't necessarily call it bitterness or sourness. It's hard to describe but very noticeable. It seems like this has something to do with the onions, but I don't know for sure. I'm going to try using only shallots next time and see what happens.
Does nyone else have a similar problem when it comes to making BIR curry bases? I'm not burning the spices or the garlic, and the "bite" doesn't seem to cook out of the onions no matter how long I simmer them.
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I would only use the vidalias, honestly.
You should consider cooking the onions first, add your base(ghee) then spicing that sauce. You dont wanna overcook the spices during frying, they should mostly cook in during the simmer phase.
Also your spice mix is a bit weird, cardamom, cumin (consider grinding the seeds in a morter and pestle) and coriander all sound good but fenugreek is a bit weird for me, I think it belongs in other indian dishes. Also I think cinnamon isn't great in curry. Get some chili powder and some turmeric instead.
This is just my experience my dad is from zimbabwae and we eat a lot of curry.
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How long do you cook the onions for before adding the rest of the spices? And do you add any crushed tomatoes/paste at all to the dish?
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>>9281412
I pretty much only sweat em. Low heat, you want a very light brown without basically any searing. They should be tranlucent and maybe still slightly crunchy (they will soften during simmer).
Sometimes I do, sometimes I dont. For tikka masala etc which is more british I do add some tomatoes and cook em down. For madras and jalfrezi I up the yoghurt I add later and skip tomatoes to make room for more peppers and spice. Careful not to add too much yoghurt, or if you do make sure you have a lot of time to simmer out the acid taste and you add more spices. Since you are actually using ghee, you lucky dog, you probably dont need to add yoghurt.
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>>9281444
Sorry I should have specified, I was asking OP because the time spent cooking the onions and the inclusion of tomatoes could be the weird off flavors he's getting in his curries
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>>9281382
Hm ok. So you think the spices might be getting burnt? I'll try that tonight thanks
>>9281412
Op here. I cook them for at least 30 minutes. That seems to get rid of most of the bite but it's still noticeable. I don't add tomato paste until closer to the end, a few minutes before I add cream. The bite is there before I add the tomato so it isn't that
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>>9281476
Well shit. I was hoping it was the tomato doing it. Maybe try cooking the spices a little longer? Or leaving out a couple of the more pungent ones, experiment with them.
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>>9281144
i think your ground coriander may be off. try roasting your own coriander seeds and breaking them up in a pestle and mortar
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