Topic: Pre cooked chicken

[adamavfc]

I want to make one of the curries on here( CA Madras)

Do i need to pre cook the chicken?

If yes- How do I pre cook the chicken? Do i Just fry it before I cook the curry? Or is there a special way I should do it?

[Stephen Lindsay]

adamavfc

Pre-cooking chicken is, in my opinion optional. The reason restaurants do this is to cut down the cooking time when making curries in large numbers of the course of an evening service. I very rarely pre-cook chicken, instead I put my chicken in the pan between stages one and two, give it a light cook both sides and then add the second batch of base, by which time the chicken is cooked through.

There's recipes on this site for pre-cooked chicken and if you use the search facility you will find them. Another method is to pre-cook your chicken in some base which I've done in the past when I've been cooking a large batch of curry for freezing, or when my pals come round.

Hope this helps.

[Naga]

Because this site is all about the dishes served up in British Indian Restaurants (and by extension, takeaways), anything that CAN be pre-prepared usually is.

That doesn't mean to say that you MUST pre-cook your chicken, but if you're using a BIR recipe, like CA's for example, you're looking at producing a meal in something under 10 minutes, so you wouldn't want to cook raw chicken using the type of recipe you're looking at.

In saying that, there's nothing to stop you frying the chicken off first and setting it aside before embarking on the recipe proper, then you would simply re-introduce the cooked chicken at the appropriate point in the recipe.

I often do this for a change - even if I have pre-cooked chicken or chicken tikka readily available.

If you want to pre-cook chicken in large batches (say, 1-2kg) which you can freeze for later use, there are loads of recipes which are mainly variations on a theme. Just do a search for them on the site.

As an example, I use Abdul Mohed's pre-cooked chicken recipe and mickdabass's chicken tikka recipe as my standards, but there are loads more popular recipes to choose from on the site.

You won't be disappointed with any of CA's recipes - they're very good - and there's loads more great recipes here too. Happy currying!

[Stephen Lindsay]

adamvfc I did a wee search myself and came across this link:

http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php/topic,11667.msg91108.html#msg91108

[Stephen Lindsay]

good shout Naga - I think we posted at the same time!

[Naga]

Aye, Stephen, you beat me to the punch but you're bang on about getting the chicken in between stages 1-2 - especially if it's a Madras and you're going to evaporate the sauce out a bit more than usual. Two heads are better than one!

[Stephen Lindsay]

Naga I agree - I am rarely in a hurry therefore pre cooking is not something I do usually and cooking in the last bit of Taze base (stage 1) before it has fully evaporated means that the chicken is cooking is a strong sauce/paste anyway.

Steve

[Gav Iscon]

CA's recipe's usually start by cooking the chicken. I've done a few of his and always cook the chicken from fresh and find the results spot on. I usually simmer the dish at the end whilst sorting out rice, nans etc to ensure the chicken is thoroughly cooked.

[adamavfc]

Thanks the lot of you for answering my questions. Good Karma for all

[goncalo]

adamvfc I did a wee search myself and came across this link:

http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php/topic,11667.msg91108.html#msg91108

I just wanted to mention that this is a bit of an old post and I have since moved on to using the Viceroy Brasserie's method instead. The c2g method compared to this one is a beginner's approach and does not seem to work every time.  This topic documents my current precooking method with a video and pictures.

http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php/topic,11787.0/topicseen.html

As a lot of people have already mentioned before, you don't need to pre-cook the chicken, but it does help to infuse extra flavour, to tenderise and to get through the cooking quickly than otherwise. It's a staple in my kitchen! I do only a minimal change, to enhance the stock, which is to blend a pepper with onion that goes with the solids at the bottom of the pan where the chicken is precooked and back into the container where the chicken is put (tip taken from bengali bob)

Naga I agree - I am rarely in a hurry therefore pre cooking is not something I do usually

Hmm. What specifically is it that saves you time when cooking the chicken fresh with each curry? I'm honestly curious. I do see your point about the stage1 reduction providing almost the same level of flavor infusion as a precooking method, but I'd imagine you would not be saving time there and it would probably make the stage1 a bit more "pan driven", as you would be scraping more often than not? Perhaps you are distributing the overhead, rather than having a single laborious go, which is a plausible excuse. I personally prefer the precooking method as I take 2-3 hours of the day in which I make the base and just get through about 20-25 breasts, half of which go straight into the freezer and the other half is kept in a container for "service" for approx. 3-5 days.