The homemade curry thread

[UTH]

craigjm said:

UTH said:

craigjm said:

UTH said:

I’m planning on making the chicken vindaloo on Thursday using the base sauce I made today.
Mrs UTH is keen for curry too, but she can’t handle any spice really. Any good Glebe recipes using the same base sauce but not spicy end product?

Why not make a proper vindaloo rather than a British Indian restaurant hot sauce. Recipe is at the start of this thread

Because I’m keen to see if I can be successful at making what I get from the restaurants. Sometimes that’s just the type of thing I’m craving.
Bit like McDonald’s, sometimes their crappy burgers are just the only thing that’ll do.

Fair enough. It’s really easy from a base sauce

Will certainly give your recipe a go too once I’ve “scratched this itch” of the restaurant style.

[UTH]

number2 said:

I used to do similar. Make my vindaloo in one pan and then a mild one - can't recall which - for the missus on another pan. I used to put some spinach in it to make it a saag as well .

One thing I'd do differently with the vindaloo is use less garlic - there's garlic in the base, and with the garlic in the paste it was a tad much. When I do it again I'd use one Tbsp in the paste. Delicious though. Obviously don't hold back on the naga pickle. The tikka on its own is excellent.

Wonder if I make my life easier and just follow the vindaloo recipe for her but leave out anything that’s actually spicy. Could be an option?

[UTH]

number2 said:

This is what I made in addition to the Vindaloo. The Palak wasn't spicy I don't think, but drop down the chilli content if concerned, and I'd leave out the additional garlic/ginger paste.

Two pans, two spice mixes., but you've got two arms .

Two pans is fine, I’ve spent my curry career cooking one spicy and one non, so that should be fine

[UTH]

number2 said:

UTH said:

Two pans is fine, I’ve spent my curry career cooking one spicy and one non, so that should be fine

I didn't include the link, not that you couldn't find it

https://glebekitchen.com/palak-chicken-curry-saagw...

I think she’d like that, only problem is it doesn’t use the restaurant base gravy I’ve made

[UTH]

number2 said:

UTH said:

I think she’d like that, only problem is it doesn’t use the restaurant base gravy I’ve made

Ah, it was Illmonkey who made the hotel gravy.

Can't be much different can it, just use the gravy you've made .

Yeah probably right.
I think I’ll do her the butter chicken this time as they both use the same stuff I’ve made so I can’t be blamed for going off piste.

[UTH]

Bit more prep before curry night tomorrow

Just made myself some of this: https://glebekitchen.com/indian-restaurant-spice-m...
Pretty much followed to the letter although I reduced all of the amounts in proportion as I don’t need loads. Only difference is I used smoked paprika instead of normal.

It doesn’t smell overly like a curry mix but then maybe it’s not supposed to?
Waiting on a few more ingredients to turn up today then I’ll prep some vindaloo paste so tomorrow’s cook should be well prepped.

Edited by UTH on Wednesday 26th October 14:08

[UTH]

Vindaloo paste done. Again, no idea really what it’s meant to smell or taste like, but it looks the part

[UTH]

nebpor said:

That looks fearsome!!

It does look fiery. But I’m still following the recipe by the letter so it should be as expected. I hope.

[UTH]

For the Glebe experts, does it really matter what pan you cook in? The recipes all seem to talk about frying pans but I usually cook in proper pots. Any reason why pots wouldn’t work for these recipes?

[UTH]

Davey S2 said:

My ring piece is on fire just looking at that

Haha. Luckily I am a bit of a spice fiend, but that paste I don’t actually think will be too punchy. It’s just got a lot of rehydrated Kashmiri chillis in there which aren’t too hot.
I’ll be adding some Carolina reaper powder to the actual curry I think.

[UTH]

number2 said:

UTH said:

For the Glebe experts, does it really matter what pan you cook in? The recipes all seem to talk about frying pans but I usually cook in proper pots. Any reason why pots wouldn’t work for these recipes?

I just cook in non-stick frying pans because that's what I have available. On induction too.

I don't feel like I've been missing out .

Yeah recipes all say frying pans. Just would rather use my pots. Can’t imagine it’ll ruin it if I do, but wanted to check if I’m making a glaring error.

[UTH]

HM-2 said:

UTH said:

number2 said:

UTH said:

For the Glebe experts, does it really matter what pan you cook in? The recipes all seem to talk about frying pans but I usually cook in proper pots. Any reason why pots wouldn’t work for these recipes?

I just cook in non-stick frying pans because that's what I have available. On induction too.

I don't feel like I've been missing out .

Yeah recipes all say frying pans. Just would rather use my pots. Can’t imagine it’ll ruin it if I do, but wanted to check if I’m making a glaring error.

I tend to use my non-stick (rather than proper carbon steel) wok.

Hmmmm, think that gives me even more of a problem of space on the hob as my wok is huge.
Basically want to use my pots as I'm cooking two curries at once, then pan for rice plus kettle, so the hob is full and my wok/frying pans are big.

[UTH]

number2 said:

Don't sweat it, it'll be fine whatever you use .

Cast iron holds a lot of heat though so isn't that responsive to changes in input temperature so be aware of that.

Yeah, I've watched a couple more of the Glebe videos and it does look like having fairly thin frying pans for quick heat response might be a good idea. Might go and buy a couple of cheap ones.

No doubt I'm overthinking all of this, but I'm determined to make it awesome.

[UTH]

nebpor said:

UTH said:

Yeah, I've watched a couple more of the Glebe videos and it does look like having fairly thin frying pans for quick heat response might be a good idea. Might go and buy a couple of cheap ones.

No doubt I'm overthinking all of this, but I'm determined to make it awesome.

You are. My advice (as also given by others) is use something that you understand how it cooks - cook something else in it first to get a feel for how quickly it heats/cools/evaporates!!

I can't cook on really thin pans at all. They lose too much heat when you put ingredients in, meaning you then crank the heat to get it back up to cooking temp, which then goes too hot ... repeat ad nauseam

Hmmm yes perhaps you are right actually, I've cooked hundreds of curries in my usual pots, I'm just overthinking the Glebe kitchen instructions about how important the Maillard reaction is but not to burn etc. But I pretty much never burn anything when I cook my usual curry, so I should probably just have faith in myself!

[UTH]

Sorry, one more question for those in the know; Glebe never mentions using Ghee, it always seems to be oil he cooks with.....anyone switched oil for ghee when cooking the curry?

[UTH]

Cool thanks mate, I’ll go with my usual ghee, keep it authentic and unhealthy haha

[UTH]

Wife’s butter chicken and my vindaloo.

Not gonna lie, I was a little bit stressed trying to follow two recipes for the first time and get it all right.
At the point of tasting (once the chicken was in both pots) I was very pleased with the butter chicken but pretty disappointed with my vindaloo. To look at, it was absolutely spot on, so I was very pleased to have replicated the takeaway look. But the taste was nothing like a vindaloo, or any curry I’d had before really.
Strangely, once I served up with my pilau rice and naan it suddenly tasted brilliant.

You can certainly tell there’s a fair amount of oil/ghee/calories in there though. We both suddenly hit a wall and had to give up. That doesn’t happen with my usual homemade curry.

Overall I’m pretty much over the moon that I’ve cooked something that looks identical to what gets delivered to my door, and tasted pretty awesome too.

[UTH]

nebpor said:

UTH said:

Overall I’m pretty much over the moon that I’ve cooked something that looks identical to what gets delivered to my door, and tasted pretty awesome too.

Good for you - that's what counts, my cookware brother - even down to the ramekins!

Awesome, on many levels

[UTH]

Doing my second Glebe attempt tonight, going with the same vindaloo, hopefully I will have learnt something from last week to improve things, although right now I'm not entirely sure what.

[UTH]

noopets said:

I made a glebe kitchen madras the other night using his spice mix, wasn’t impressed with it not much flavour.

Hope it’s not the mix as I’ve made enough to last about 20 curries ??

As you’ll probably see from my previous posts, my first attempt last week wasn’t great when I was tasting it in the pot, but served up with my pilau rice and naan it was pretty good.

Tonight’s effort was a marked improvement. Still using the same base gravy as last week (defrosted a pot of it) plus the same paste I’ve got lots of in the fridge, so I’m not entirely sure what I did differently. I think maybe just the spice mix, amount of paste and general cooking I did more by feel than following the recipe exactly.

Like you I was concerned after last week as I have so much of the paste left and a fair bit of the gravy.
But, after tonight I’ve already made another batch of gravy to freeze and am definitely going to do this curry again and again.

That said, I can totally tell that it’s heavy on calories as I really do feel like I’ve had a take away rather than my usual homemade curry which is fairly healthy. Definitely one for a Saturday treat.