Tell me the curry secret!!?

[MermaidTears]

To ask if anyone out there knows the secret. Or has a husband who works in an Indian restaurant and knows?

We have a curry every single Saturday night, our long running tradition.
We just worked out we spend around 1300 a year on takeaways! 25 every Saturday (roughly)

I have tried every single recipe, every book, every supermarket Fakeaway they never taste like the restaurant ones!

We have been to Goa and the food was heavenly.
There must be a secret ingredient that I don't know? Anyone out there know?

We need to cut back our finances, and tbh what we spend on takeaways could pay for half towards our trip to Goa

I got given a subscription for the Spicery for Christmas. They do curry house favourites and we've tried lots of curries/dishes that we haven't come across. I also second Madhur Jaffrey - I've made some great curries from there!

We don't have takeaways very often , far too greasy for our taste. I haven't had a curry in a restaurant either for months as the last one I had consisted mainly of onion and lots of grease. The three I make regularly at home are the Spinach and chickpea one from "Vegan with a vengeance" An Anna jones one with coconut/lime and maple syrup topping - mainly squash and tamarid spiced and an aubergine and lentil curry from Good Housekeeping. I'm going on a day long South Indian cookery course at Demuth's in January, so I will hopefully know the secret then. I find that practice and using recipes with complex spicing - and following the instructions, not leaving bits out works well. I have one of the stainless steel spice tins that holds 10 different spices which is really useful.

We have a Friday Night Curry in our house - I love cooking Indian food! My go-to recipes are largely from books by Anjum Anand, who keeps things light and healthy. But the onions are definitely the important bit - I always use red onions, chop them fine and brown the slowly and carefully. Getting this step right really impacts on flavour and texture. Our favourite recipes is this one:

www.cooked.com/uk/Anjum-Anand/Quadrille-Publishing/Indian-Food-Made-Easy/Chicken/Chicken-in-creamy-yoghurt-recipe

I need pea and potato curry now. thankfully I'm self employed so booking the morning off work to make it wasn't a problem.

I am also very interested in curries that can be made in the slow cooker, once the initial browning of onions/spices has been done???

This book is the secret,https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002S0KC1M/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 brought it for DP a few yrs ago, makes the best curries ever and rivals most local takeaways...just don't think about the amount of oil

Husband is Bengali and works in an Indian restaurant here! You need a couple on onions finely sliced with a tablespoon of salt to help blend the onions down. Cook it in veg oil with garlic and finely chopped ginger. Cook this for 45 mins or so until the onions are a blended sauce.

Add turmeric, dried coriander, cumin and chilli powder and fry these with the onions you need to cook this properly or the spices won't break down. Add your meat or veg and cook for another half hour to 40mins and add plant of fresh coriander right at the end. We don't really use cream or coconut as that's not traditional on the whole. This is a fairly standard curry for Bengali's.

llwyn that's the third recommendation for the curry secret

We use Spicery curry kits
www.thespicery.com

Wonderful!

I have 'The Curry Secret' It's american and generally has some good tips and tricks, but has some lazy elements that I tweak to make more delicious. EG using tinned stuff sometimes....

I used this recipe this week and it was HEAVEN
www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/recipes/keralan-chicken-curry-with-chillies-and-coconut-milk/

May have already been mentioned but I've had success with Pat Chapman's books here or available on Amazon, etc.

As others have said there's a basic heavily onion based gravy with tomato and few other things (fry loads of onions, add stuff, blitz) that restaurants use as the basis of most curries.

Fry a shed load of onions until caramelised then blend them in the same pan fry your spices in a little bit of ghee or coconut oil then add the onions to make a thick sauce add meat so it poaches in the sauce this is how you get lovely tender meat , if you can get hold of curry leaves this is what gives an authentic flavour , a little bit of fresh chilli and finish with chopped coriander just before serving , i find adding extra cumin enhances everything and it also helps stop the wind from the chillies

Just bought 4 books from ebay because of this thread - bought the jack santa maria vegetarian one (not vegetarian but seems popular and I can mess with them) - Complete Indian Cookbook by M. Baljekar - My Kitchen Table: 100 Weeknight Curries Madhur Jaffrey and My Kitchen Table: 100 Quick Stir Fry Recipes Ken Hom (just to mix it up a little)

Also I find that asking for recipes from Indian subcontinent heritage friends is often fraught with disappointment because at home they way they eat doesn't really bear much resemblance to what is served in your average high street Indian restaurant, which is usually what indigenous Brits mean when we say a 'decent' curry!

I have nothing to add here placemarking GREAT Thread people

I make a simple curry by frying lots of onions, adding a mix of spices, so a tsp chilli powder, cumin, turmeric, coriander and garam masala, then after a quick fry add a tin of toms and leave. when I am ready to eat I add whatever curry it's going to be, so fried up chicken / lamb /prawns / eggs / vegetables/ potato and cauliflower / chick pea and sweet potato/ lentils sometimes too and right before serving add a tub of greek yoghurt. If I want it mild I also add coconut cream sachet tis delicious and healthier than allthe fat and ghee stuff.

Just to say theres a great blog called ‘this Muslim girl bakes'and in particular the recipe for the lamb aloo gosht (I use lamb mince) - as pps have said blending the onions and the spices makes a huge difference and gives that thick sauce I often couldn't achieve previously! A revelation to me!

I often find the curries in restaurants are actually the worst tasting ones. Pataks or do them from scratch is the way forward. Plenty of recipes out there.

In restaurants they boil while peeled onions, then blend them, then fry, add garlic, ginger, spices etc. That's where the silky texture of the device comes from. don't think it's authentic though! Camellia Panjabi's books are fabulous. I went on a curry cooking course and it was all about using red onions and caramelising them to a mush for 30 minutes. That course changed my life!

Effing auto "correct". Whole onions and texture of the sauce obviously!

Well from the sounds of things it just might be the ghee.

I have made lots of different over the years following recipes but to be honest I had been very tight with the ghee. Maybe I underestimated just how much it needs shit loads of ghee and salty!

As a player poster said her Indian mil backed the ghee thing up then It must be so!

Specifically I like madras and dhansak.

I've just ordered the curry secret off Amazon.

Will have a look at rick stein also.

I have made loads that are nice and tasty, bit never ever taste anywhere near the same as takeaway. To the point where id rather have a completely different meal.

Desperate to have the money though for our holiday so I am going to go ghee mental .

Will let you know how it goes!!

Also a friend just told me that restaurants make a base sauce (as posted before mostly onion) then this can be made into pretty much any curry, once customised!

Also agree Goan curry is very different from curry we have here. But still lovely.

Ooohhh mrs think I just found my Xmas pressie. I would love to go in a cooking course. May I ask how expensive it was?

nursepearl thankyou I just knew someone had to have a husband who works in the kitchens!

I have tried to ask at my local and they evaded all questions. Bastards.

Now you need to buy one of the massive Indian cooking pots. It's such a faff making the base sauce but so easy after that. The more base sauce you make, the easier your life will be. Do huge quantities.