Topic: Curry Tester's Base Soup + Curry

[SnS]

Added by Admin

Here is the recipe in its entirety.

Base Sauce

Use any good recipe for chicken stock if you need one please ask as I have one for everyday and one for chinese dishes.

Roughly 2.5 pts chicken stock - I didnt measure this but  have topped pan to approx level and measured
400g Thinly sliced onions
200g Carrots chopped
20g Garlic Puree bottled from Indian Supermarket
10g Ginger Puree as above
10ml Cumin Ground
10ml Coriander ground
10ml Turmeric powder
10ml Paprika Natco or Rajah if I remember right
1 Large stick celery sliced
250g Butter

1. Turn butter into ghee by gently melting and passing through muslin or tea towelto remove solids.
2. Mic the cumin,coriander,turmeric, and paprike with water to get a nice not too thick paste.
3. Put wok on high heat and add about 180g ghee.
4. Add sliced onions and stir fry until soft about 7 mins
5. Add the chopped carrots and continue to stir fry until you can just see the onions starting to caramellise about 5 mins.
6. Add garlic, ginger and spice mix and stir fry without burning for about 1 min until the smell gets more fragrant.
7. Add celery and stock and bring to the boil.
8. Turn heat down and simmer until celery is softened about 20 mins - you should notice the ghee is now floating on the top.
9. Remove from heat and blitz so there are no lumps remaining.
10. At this stage I split the sauce into 2 pots there was in total 1.25 litres of sauce - I added 80g blitzed chopped tomatoes to one of the pans.
11 Bring both saucepans to boil and simmer until ghee starts to separate add water as necessary to achieve a consistency such that if you dip a spoon in the back it isnt quite coated
12  Remove from heat - you should notice that you get a lot less separation of the ghee.
13. Remove scum from surface if you wish - I didnt as I was a bit rushed

Sauce is complete



Moved from New Base Gravy from visit to Saffron by SnS

What a load of twaddle you guys are talking. I want you to step back from all this rubbish talked for a second and peruse your own navels. Base, gravy, sauce what ever you want to call it is a very simple concoction. It will be different in almost every curry house in the world. But it will taste something like a curry in the final dish. Wherever I have travelled throughout Britain and Europe I have always stopped to sample the local curry house fare and without fail they have tasted like some sort of curry which can be categorised as good, average or different from normal UK or wouldn't try again.
Now lets look at the recipes that have been submitted to this board for curry bases over the years. They consist of vegetable soup, generally ginger/garlic puree, spices in various proportions and oil.
Now if I were an Indian Restaurant owner I would be looking to create what I would call a generic vegetable soup using readily available cheap vegetables. So in the UK what are the cheap vegetables? Onions bought by the sack, potatoes bought by the sack and carrots bought by the sack. Total cost of a sack weighing 25Kgs of each no more than ?15. Thats a lot of soup. 75Kg plus water plus oil/ghee. The other cheap commodity is of course chopped tomatoes in tins.
My wife was recently on a weight watchers diet and one of the staples of the diet was a "eat as much as you like vegetable soup" made strangely using most of the above ingredients. Did it taste good - Yes.
Now I put to you that the difference in "taste" from one curry house to the next and the quality of the final curry depends on this soup mix and the mix of the spices and herbs used to produce the final base sauce plus the quality of oil/ghee used.
So lets look at the soup first.

Quantity of Onions
Quantity of Carrots
Quantity of Potatoes

Tomatoes - if i wanted a slightly different flavour to the soup.

1. To make a weight watchers soup I would throw all the chopped ingredients into a pan and boil until cooked. Puree half the mixture and season to personal taste. To change the flavour I would perhaps add some tomatoes.

2. To make a good soup to restaurant standard I would first soften the onions frying in a little oil or butter (could be Ghee)add the carrots to the oil, fry for a few more minutes then add some vegetable or chicken stock and the potatoes. Puree half and season to taste. You have then got a reasonable quality soup. Especially if you add a few herbs as well.

Most Indian Restaurants would adopt method 1. above to make their soup - chuck everything in puree it add spices etc quick and easy.

Quality restaurants however would probably use method 2 to produce a deeper more refined taste.

Now lets look at how we I believe should produce a curry base sauce.

Take your choice of soup recipe and experiment with it until you have a achieved the best soup you can with no garlic/ginger or added spices other than salt and pepper.

We will call this the base soup - try making it with Ghee rather than vegetable oil - you will find that you get a much richer taste. Now lets make the curry sauce which we will make generic.

Firstly add your oil or ghee to your pan on medium heat - you can add as much or as little as you like at this stage depending on how much oil you want at the end.

 Add your onions and soften and then your ginger and garlic being careful not to burn the garlic which will impart a bitter taste to the final base.

Now add your spices with a little water - I have found that equal quantities of ground coriander,ground cumin,sweet paprika - not smoked, and turmeric work well.

Stir fry for around 30 secs or so until the aroma becomes more intense. Add your carrots (if not frying with onions) and potatoes and other vegetables if using. Top up pot to your desired level (based on vegetable soup recipe )with water or even better stock - simmer until mushy.

Puree the lot add back to pan and top up with water or stock to a thin consistency bring to the boil and simmer without a lid until oil starts to separate from curry soup.

Turn off soup and skim off the scum formed on top - there is always more if you use tomatoes.
You are now ready to make your deluxe curry which should be better than the majority of take aways depending on the recipe used from this board.

I would be very surprised if expensive ingredients such as peppers are added to the base sauce mix as the majority of Indian Restaurant owners are worse than the Scots for keeping hold of their hard earned cash.

A couple of other tips for cooking curries which I always use:

Precook your meat depending on the cut

chicken breast - cube and add to pan - just cover in water with no salt added bring to the boil turn off after 3-4 minutes and leave in pan - by the time you have prepared your sauce this will be cooked/ slightly under it will finish cooking in the sauce.
Bone In Chicken as above but allow 10 mins boiling time - do this for Chinese cooking as well
Use the leftover water as stock to adjust the thickness of the curry sauce

Pork Cubes as per chicken breast - pork shouldn't be overcooked
Beef/Lamb - unless a really tender cut - (but I normally use neck or shin for extra flavour) slow cooker for a minimum of 2 hours just covered in water. Cook until meat melts in your mouth.

[Unclebuck]

Quote from: currytester on Today at 10:19:22 AM

What a load of twaddle you guys are talking.

Mmm I cant help to think that your post is going to raise a few eyebrows!, of coarse this is your humble opinion..

[JerryM]

Currytester,

you've lost me on this.

i am very happy to step back but what do we need to ponder.

have u tried any of the bases on the site.

[currytester]

Yes I have tested most of the curry bases on the site - and to be fair the recipes provided have in general produced a fairly decent curry. Yes some have more appeal than others and some are more for mild dishes or hot dishes.

But I was going through my recipe books for base sauce this morning trying to decide which one I was going to use when I decided to do a comparison. I looked at curry queens, Darth's Base, ifindforu's original base without coconut,generic curry sauce - interesting one that!, and many others.

If you take out the spices ginger and garlic you end up with a basic Onion soup type recipe with the other vege added for "stock purposes" to help improve the texture, consistency or taste.

So my point is this - step 1 make a soup that you wouldnt mind eating on its own without the garlic and ginger and spices - if it tastes good now then the curry stands a good chance of tasting good. Once this recipe is perfected start over and make your curry base add your garlic and ginger in a 2:1 or 1:1 ratio as per Saffron base. Then add your 4 spices in equal measures.

Then you have curried onion soup base gravy that should be better than your local bir takeaway.

[parker21]

hi ct
you seem to know it all, if it is so simple then why is this site and site no2 doing so well if it all about making the right "generic "( hate that word) soup. why has mr chapman made loads of money and yet still people write books about the subject which is as you say all about the making of this simple soup. if you know it all then how did you end up looking for a site like this. it seems that you have no need.

we all know we can make superior replicas than most Bir restaurants but the reason for this site is about making the curries like you get at favourite curryhouse you know the ones the ones that make you want to eat it again and again. we have heard it all before from the ultimate curry base to 10 years of experience...... and not to mention the posting of people that have been getting demos from restaurants where the real discoveries and experiences are found.

so if soup is where the answer is why bother just open a can of campbells/heinz no i know what about a big soup after all they have big chunks.

so what is your "simple" suggestion for chicken tikka masala or vindaloo or madras i know do you have a recipe for a simple balti garlic chilli chicken tikka masala?

i'm sorry to anyone who is offended by this post but trying to recreate bir curries isnot so simple and this site and every other site new or old (in2curry RIP) is/are the reasons why!

kind regards and welcome to the best BIR curry site on the web

just a simple BIR curry lover

gary

[Unclebuck]

hi ct
you seem to know it all, if it is so simple then why is this site and site no2 doing so well if it all about making the right "generic "( hate that word) soup. why has mr chapman made loads of money and yet still people write books about the subject which is as you say all about the making of this simple soup. if you know it all then how did you end up looking for a site like this. it seems that you have no need.

we all know we can make superior replicas than most Bir restaurants but the reason for this site is about making the curries like you get at favourite curryhouse you know the ones the ones that make you want to eat it again and again. we have heard it all before from the ultimate curry base to 10 years of experience...... and not to mention the posting of people that have been getting demos from restaurants where the real discoveries and experiences are found.

so if soup is where the answer is why bother just open a can of campbells/heinz no i know what about a big soup after all they have big chunks.

so what is your "simple" suggestion for chicken tikka masala or vindaloo or madras i know do you have a recipe for a simple balti garlic chilli chicken tikka masala?

i'm sorry to anyone who is offended by this post but trying to recreate bir curries isnot so simple and this site and every other site new or old (in2curry RIP) is/are the reasons why!

kind regards and welcome to the best BIR curry site on the web

just a simple BIR curry lover

gary

I would 2nd that.. if i buy or make the best veg/onion soup in the world and added Indian spices this would not equal a good base gravy.. it would just be mulligatawny soup!

Pretty sure we've discussed this one before.

I know this has been moved once already but probably best in the lets talk curry section.

[currytester]

The point I am trying to make I suppose is that if you check through most of the base sauce recipes you will find the same or similar ingredients used in each one perhaps with a bit of this and that added.
I have tried and tested most of the base sauces over an extended period of time having started with the curry secret base and used exactly the same curry recipe to test them. My findings are as I describe there is a very marginal difference between "the taste". Today I have tried a comparison between 2 bases Saffron and another - one with chopped tomatoes and one without - the one with suited my taste (or the recipe I am using) slightly better than the one without.The difference was very marginal.
I like you have been striving to make the perfect BIR curry in my case for over 20 years. This site has probably the best and most accurate recipes for stimulating the curry lovers tastebuds. As you can see from the following recipes they all use a version of Onion soup - one even gets it from a can - Check Saffron,New base Sauce recipe (with tomatoes),Rajver (with tomatoes), UB's (lots of extra bits), KD's, Darth's Madras etc etc.
So have a look for yourself - you will see the similarity between recipes but you have to step back to do so.

[haldi]

So my point is this - step 1 make a soup that you wouldnt mind eating on its own without the garlic and ginger and spices - if it tastes good now then the curry stands a good chance of tasting good.

You have certainly started a lively debate!!
But this quoted point, is extremely valid
The best curry house round here makes a gravy to die for
I can't make it, although I know all the ingredients
It's really simple too
Basically:- Onions, oil,salt & spice
However I would point out that there is no canned or packeted soup that has anything like this flavour either.
Attaining this flavour is the goal for many people on this site

[JerryM]

Currytester,

i do see what u mean and think it's the way the message is coming across that's getting the crossed wires.

i too made KD's for many years. since joining cro i feel i've made a significant step change in taste. i'd probably put the step increase down to say 50% base, spices 25% and 25% technique.

in trying out the cro bases i've come to the conclusion that there is a certain threshold that a base needs to achieve and once this is reached it's impact going forwards on the final dish is limited (spice and technique takeover).

for more info see http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php/topic,2585.msg22760.html#msg22760

so onto my question

step 1 - if it tastes good now then the curry stands a good chance of tasting good.

i've settled on rajver, saffron and ifindforu which taste fantastic.

so is step 1 only aimed at those who are not happy with their adopted base or do you believe there is something missing or to be gained.

i'm not sure that there is - on a side by side comparison against my local BIR TA (which is a 10) only shows up a lack of sweetness and smokey flavour.

[currytester]

In reality all I wanted to do with my post is bring to everyones attention that the base sauces on this site are probably representative of the variations between curry houses and their own recipe for base sauce.
I would not suggest for one second that you should use a canned soup for production although according to one recipe for a quick curry base it is said to work.
The other point is that they all invariably use vegetables in various quantities.
So the format for a base sauce is quite simple.
Garlic/Ginger  mix
Vegetable soup - various recipes contained in existing bases
Various proportions of standard spices
Additions such as tomatoes, peppers and other spices.
Today I am going to carry out a trial for you all.
The chicken stock is already on the go and will be ready in 2 hrs time.
Two chicken carcasses, two carrots, one onion, 10 peppercorns, 4 bay leaves - chicken fried before boiling - covered with water.
I will then use a cut down version of Saffrons base to establish the spice mix and proportions of garlic and ginger. I will then make a vegetable soup (onion based) using my stated method and using ghee.
So I will either shoot myself in the foot or have the recipe. Whichever to me it doesnt matter. The search for perfection continues.