Indian Curry Base Recipe

Base recipe for a standard curry without any special variation. Adjustments can be made to the spice mixes, base ingredients etc. In order to bring this in line with other recipes. Serve this with Naan, Rice, Garlic pickle or any other Indian condiments.

Great

% Daily Values based on a 2,000 calorie diet

Step 1

Dry toast the spices in a pan, until they become fragrant. Add the mustard seeds halfway through the process to avoid burning them. After toasting, transfer to a spice grinder or mortar and pestle, to grind them to a fine powder. Mix this powder with the rest of the ground spices.

Step 2

Grind or slice half the garlic and half the ginger until a fine paste (the finer, the better) and add to the meat. Alongside this, add half the Greek yogurt, salt, pepper and paprika. Let marinate - the long the better, the night before is ideal but 20 minutes will also do.

Step 3

Slice the onions and add them to the pan, allowing them to sauté and caramelise slowly on medium high heat. Towards the end of this process, add in the rest of your garlic and ginger. Cooking until browned through (this wont take long if they are sliced finely).

Step 4

To your onion garlic and ginger mix, add chopped tomatoes - this can be canned chopped tomatoes, in which case I recommend a half can for 3 people, passata or tomatoes themselves (be aware if you use tomatoes, you may need to pre cook and peel them, to loosen them up and speed up the process. Allow little water can be added to the pan if the tomato to vegetable ratio feels lacking, don’t worry, we will thicken the sauce later, but be careful not to add too much water. Add our spice mix we prepared earlier. At this point if you wish for a smoother curry, once everything is combined and cooked through, transfer the curry to a blender and blend until smooth. From here, we add our meat (sear off the meat separately if you want whilst the sauce blends, if you choose that route) to allow it to get some colour on the bottom of the pan. After our meat has begun to cook about halfway through, add your additional Indian curry paste and chillies if desired.

Step 5

Allow the curry to simmer for a while to remove the acidic tomato flavour. This can be reduced by adding a teaspoon of sugar.

Step 6

From here, add the rest of our Greek yogurt to aid in achieving the creamy consistency and texture. Stir it in until the colour is consistent. The longer the curry cooks, the move depth of flavour you will get, so allow it to cook for 20 mins, or an hour if you like, over low heat. 5 minutes before serving, add half of your coriander into the curry and stir. Add optional curry leaves if desired. When ready to serve, reserve the rest of your coriander for plating.