As for the owner i feel sorry, he doesnt need people arguing with him, I think he needs help.

I stand steadfastly shoulder to shoulder with MickyP here.

A warning for newcomers to the curry community about "what is out there on the internet" = needed

Criticism and general slagging off of CA = doesn't really help anyone. He very likely needs the kind of specialist help that can't be found on a curry forum.

Generally the advice you talk wrongly about is it to let the chicken relax in room temperature (briefly) before cooking. This because it

My favourite recipes have all been from RShome123, steveparadox, CA and Westy, with Rshome123 having 50+% share

I think these books are a great contribution to the curry community. I doubt Richard will make his million from selling them, so the motivation is elsewhere, which is admirable!

Did anyone see the one star review on Amazon?

Unknown to me I apparently ordered the digital version on Kindle, which I didn't want. Beware

Someone had mistakenly ordered the wrong version, and based on their own mistake poor Richard received one star for his fantastic book. 

Quote from: Admin Tom on December 02, 2008, 08:28 PM

This Post Has Been put together By JerryM and I have posted this on behalf of him for all to read as it has important content.  Orignal post here http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=3122.0

Re Claimed Oil
There is no discernable difference in curries cooked in fresh oil c/w reclaimed oil and no advantage of recycling curry base oil into the next base

Observations:
Malik?s webcam shows oil being taken off the top of the base to cook the curry dishes. It also shows base oil starting the next batch
The oil from the base has significantly greater taste than fresh oil and it?s intensity increases as it's recycled through batches of base
The practise does for some raise hygiene questions and the practise may not be widespread across BIR?s.
It delivers a step change in the curry taste

Conclusion: FALSE Myth (reclaimed oil is significant)

I would like to open this one up, if that's ok.

There is no doubt that BIRs use old oil in their cooking. I think this is 5% to do with adding additional flavour and 95% to do with solving the problem of what to do with old frying oil.

In the early days, they had someone come and collect it. This probably cost something and they needed to go to the trouble of draining it back in to barrels and arranging for someone to be around when the waste oil collection guy called.

Then some bright spark thought:  Hey, why don't we kill three birds with one stone, by getting our own customers to cart away our waste oil? Genius!

They managed to turn a waste product in to something they could sell. And as anyone whose been involved in the operational side of business knows, tackling waste is the quickest route to cutting costs and making more coin.

After all, what extra flavours does old "spiced" oil bring, if you're adding those same spices, and frying them, in your dish?

the Brazilian brand of which he wrote. 

Brazilian Chicken

I know this is an old topic but I have good info to share on this subject. In my old life we used tons of Brazilian chicken breast meat every day.

At the time (and maybe this is still the case), the EU imposed different tarrifs on different types of chicken meat imports from outside the EU. One way to achieve a lower tarrif was to "process" the breast meat in some way.

The Brazilian supplier would add 1.2% salt to their breast meat. Now for those who don't know, a reasonable level of salt in a meal is somewhere around 0.5-0.7%. Once you get up to 1.2%, the product starts to taste "salty". Obviously those who designed the tarrif criteria knew this, and knew that this "salted chicken" would not be acceptable to the average housewife/husband, and thus the tarrif helped protect the EU chicken industry.

We used to use this salted chicken  in chicken nuggets, burgers, etc. The factory recipe called for 0.6% of salt in the meat mix. This was easily achieved by mixing half a ton of 1.2% salted chicken with half a ton of "normal" chicken. The resulting meat mix had 0.6% salt, bang on target.

Now this Brazilian 1.2% salted chicken breast meat also found its way in to the food service sector, i.e. those companies that supply the restaurant trade. The substantially lower cost was unresistable for many. I can, and have, noticed this salted chicken being used in curries. Questioning the owner and they admit, yes, it is Brazilian salted chicken, but the price is too good to resist. And anyway, most customers just don't notice it.

Salting chicken can help tenderise it, and this could be one reason why some people wonder why their home-cooked chicken doesn't have the same mouth-feel.

How to get the best results at home

The first thing to realise is that the root cause of "tough chicken" could be totally out of your control.

During the slaughter process, birds are first stunned before having their throats cut, and then they are hung upside down to bleed out. The two main types of stunning are electric and gas (pretty much like your cookers in the UK ). Electric stunning can be problematic if the stun isn't applied properly and at the right level. It can cause the muscle to seize up, resulting in tough meat.

There is also a second theory about the stress level of the birds at point of slaughter, but there was less hard evidence for this.

Guidelines to maximise chance of tender chicken

1. Start off with good raw material. Buy fresh chicken where you can, from reputable suppliers that have full traceability of their supply chain. Cheap chicken is cheap for a reason. Cuts are made in the supply chain, processes are not controlled and audited to the same level.

2. Try to avoid cooking twice. You're just doubling the opportunities to dry out your chicken. Freezing in itself also causes loss of moisture.

3. Invest in a digital probe cooking thermometer. 8