How do you make a good curry?

[Bluebluetuesday]

Mine are always too tomato heavy or a bit watery and bland. How do you make a really good, medium hot, rich curry please?

But maybe a good basic recipe or two would help?

What on earth is a sortied potato?

I find anything I’ve tried from Meera Sodha really tasty and the recipes are clear . Can get books in Amazon

Follow a proper recipe made by Indian people. 😂 Not like Jamie Oliver.

If you want a reasonably accessible one that will be similar in style to a lot of British curries, the Makhani sauce in the Dishoom cookbook (google it) is fairly easy.

Generally, it needs the right spices at the right times and needs to be blended, if you’re trying to get close to what we’d typically call a curry.

One that's been attacked by ghee.

This is basically what I do. Remember the salt. Oh and I add tomato puree when I do garlic/ ginger.
for veggie curries add black mustard seeds to the oil first and let them pop.
if using whole spices (bay, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon) then add these to oil first.
I don’t use ghee and neither does my mum. High cholesterol.

Each stage longer than you think. Especially onions.

I used to faf around with all the different spices. Now I use the Spice Tailor kits which are brilliant.

It's all about the lentils for me, I don't think I could bring myself to add too much oil or ghee!

I have that book from a charity shop but haven’t really used it much. I’m a bit bored so going to make that daal now for lunch

This right here, is abhorrent.

Thermomix butter chicken.

The end.

For ease I use a premade paste (I like Patak's) but always plenty of chopped onion, garlic and ginger just like up thread.

A neighbour recommended a company called East to Home. He’s a connoisseur and said their sauces are excellent. We’ve ordered some.

Look up Al's Kitchen on YouTube - he has a series of 30 minute curries that truly replicate the restaurant flavour (BIR rather than authentic). He shows you every step of the process, and I've yet to have a failure with any of his recipes.

I always make my own curry sauce but I marinade my meat in a Patak’s curry paste overnight.

We stumbled across the Simple Mushroom Curry on BBC good food which has whetted our appetite for better curry recipes, I think it’s excellent. I think following recipes exactly for a few goes and then starting to vary a little as you go is the best approach.

Salt. The secret ingredient is always lots of salt!

This is great. Similar to what we do.

But OP, if you’re not getting good results and aren’t confident in what to do, I think starting with the spice tailor kit is a good place to begin. It basically takes you through a few basics, bit by bit. When you’re used to that you can try better recipes and more authentic cooking, and a lot more cheaply than buying the kits.

Always start with frying chopped onions, garlic and ginger (I use frozen versions of the latter 2).

Always fry your curry powder/chili powder.

I only add a small amount of water (teaspoons). If you add too much it will be watery, especially if you're adding vegetables.

Slow cook everything. Lowest fire for hours. Chicken needs a very low fire for tenderness, but I tend to add it after letting the sauce cook down a bit.

If you're using tinned tomatoes, a bit of brown sugar and butter can help reduce the tang.

I don't use precooked sauces, but if I did, I would add seasoning to them, like all purpose seasoning, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, stock cubes/powder.

Yes, do this!

I was about to start posting a load of details about what I do, but Al will show you exactly what to do without undue faff.

He's really enjoyable to watch, too.

Nisha Katona (of Mowgli Street Food) - lots of videos of her cooking in own kitchen or on This Morning. Also had own show on ITV. Lots of explanations.

Some fantastically nice ones in the hairy bikers books- they use fennel a lot and coconut milk on the ones I most like

See if you can get your hands on a second hand copy of Meera Sodha's Fresh India (try ebay). It's full of wonderful and quite easy recipes. We made two curries from it this afternoon and as others have mentioned, they both involved cooking lots of onions at the first stage (though in veg oil, not ghee) for a good 10 mins, loads of garlic, lots of fresh grated ginger, a few spices (the roasted root veg with madras sauce needed fresh curry leaves which I was able to get in sainsbury's and I think made all the difference) and cooking the tomatoes down to get quite a thick and concentrated sauce.
Meera also has lots of recipes on the guardian website.

She's also written two brilliant cookbooks - Mowgli Street Food and Meat Free Mowgli, which I've used a lot. They're very clear and easy to follow and many of the recipes are really simple and relatively quick.

Not a traditional style curry, but Jamie Oliver's 'My kinda butter chicken' is absolutely delicious. pan charred tomatoes and chillies with a sauce/marinade using yoghurt and cashew butter. For more traditional and BIR style, the 'curry guy' has loads of recipes