Restaurant Curry Sauce

British Indian Restaurant style Curry Sauce

Trying to recreate a curry at home that tastes like one from a British Indian Restaurant or Takeaway isn’t as difficult as it might first appear. Have you had a Chicken Madras from your local takeaway or restaurant and wondered how they get the consistency and taste so delicious?

The secret lies in the basic curry sauce that is the basis for just about every dish a restaurant will create. The recipe will be a closely guarded secret and a restaurant won’t give it up cheaply.

Madras Curry made with this recipe

I’ve researched and experimented over a number of years and have found some excellent recipes but each of them had an element I wasn’t particularly fond of. One recipe called for boiling the onions, which admittedly resulted in a good sauce, but which left my house stinking for what seemed like weeks. Another recipe had cinnamon as an ingredient which I found overpowering and I can’t recall tasting it in any curry I’ve eaten.

I’ve created my own method of making a basic curry sauce which I think is as close as I can get without breaking into the safe of my local curry house. It borrows from other recipes but I’ve added my own methods as I’ve strived to make a better sauce. The ingredients are simple and I’m sure most recipes contain them but I think my method results in a great sauce. 

Equipment

I use a large heavy aluminium pan with a tight fitting lid, large saucepan and a normal frying pan or chef’s pan.

The main piece of equipment you’ll need is a hand blender. If you haven’t got one then I suggest buying one or stick to sauces from jars. The blender is the key to the consistency of the sauce and it’s a pre-requisite.

Ingredients 

The measures below are for making around ten 225 ml portions, each of which is enough for one meal for one person. 

1 kg white or brown onions

50 ml sunflower oil plus an extra two tablespoons for the tomatoes 

200 ml Passata 

1 teaspoon spoon turmeric

1 dessert spoon paprika

50 g garlic (or use ready made garlic puree)

50g fresh grated ginger (or ready made grated ginger)

1 heaped teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon tomato puree

2 ½ pints of water

Method



Fry the onions

Peel and slice the onions, peel the garlic cloves and grate the ginger. 

Add half of the oil to your heavy based pan or saucepan. Add half of the onions and sweat gently for 10-15 minutes until softened; do not brown the onions at all. Keeping the lid on the pan will allow steam to be produced and will prevent the onions colouring and will ensure they become soft. 

Tip the softened onions into your large saucepan and repeat with the other half of the oil and onions. After 5 minutes throw the garlic and ginger in with the onions and continue to sweat down gently as before. Do not allow the garlic to burn, you’ll spoil the sauce. Add this batch of onions to the first batch in the large pan.



Gravy before being blitzed

Add two tablespoons of oil to a separate frying pan and heat to a medium temperature. Add the turmeric to the oil and stir until dissolved. Pour the passata into the frying pan along with the sea salt. Reduce the heat and add the tomato puree. Simmer the mixture for two minutes on a low heat stirring occasionally. After two minutes add the paprika and continue cooking for another two minutes.

Once the spicy tomato sauce has cooked for four or five minutes throw it into the pan with the onions. Add the water to the saucepan also. Now the fun part; take your blender and give the entire onion mixture a serious blitzing, and I mean a good 2 minutes at least. It should be silky smooth with a pale red orange colour.

Finished gravy after blitzing

The next stage is an important one. You’ll need to bring the onion gravy mixture up to simmering point and cook for around 20 minutes. During this time a lot of scum will rise to the surface and should be scraped off and chucked down the sink. You need to do this until no more scum floats upwards as it will spoil the final taste. The sauce will reduce slightly too and become thicker. Don’t worry about the thickness of the sauce at this point as you will reduce it even further when you cook your actual dish.

I recommend splitting the sauce into 225 ml batches and pouring it into zippable freezer bags or plastic containers. One 225 ml serving will be enough for a single meal although it’s down to personal preference.

Chicken Madras

Now that you’ve done the hard part in making the base sauce, it’s time to use it in an actual dish. My favourite dish at a Restaurant is a Chicken Madras; spicy without being outrageous on the chilli and is the one I’ll detail here. 

For a single meal for one use 225 ml of your base sauce. In addition, you’ll need a few other ingredients.

Chicken Breast

2 tablespoons vegetable oil or ghee (30 ml)

Clove garlic crushed

1 teaspoon grated ginger

1 tomato, skinned, deseeded and chopped roughly

1 teaspoon Chilli powder

½ teaspoon Turmeric

½ teaspoon Ground Cumin

½ teaspoon Ground Coriander

1/2 teaspoon ground fenugreek

¾ teaspoon sea salt

Tablespoon chopped fresh coriander leaf

I prefer to confit my chicken breast to get that melt in the mouth texture you’d expect at a restaurant. Cut the chicken breast in to one inch pieces, place in a saucepan, add a pinch of turmeric and cover with vegetable oil. Turn on the heat and leave it as low as you can and gently poach the chicken for approximately 15 – 20 minutes until cooked through. Set aside to relax while you prepare the Madras sauce. I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t poach the chicken in water or stock if you want to be healthy. This is a curry though so I’ll stick with the oil. 

In a large frying pan, wok or chef’s pan add the oil and bring to a medium temperature. Fry the tomato for a minute. Add your base curry sauce, chicken breast, salt, turmeric, garlic, ginger and chilli powder and cook quite vigorously for five minutes, stirring to prevent the sauce sticking. After five minutes add the cumin, ground coriander, reduce the heat and simmer until the sauce is at the desired thickness. It should take around five more minutes but it depends how you like the sauce. Keep stirring until it’s done to your liking. Just before serving stir in the fenugreek.

Serve in a balti dish with sprinkled chopped coriander leaf and serve with naan bread.

If you want to change the dish to a Vindaloo, just add another teaspoon of chilli, a cubed cooked potato and a dessert spoon of white wine vinegar. In addition you could also add ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper and ¼ teaspoon ground cardamom seeds.

If you'd like to try your own Mulligatawny soup then head over to http://mulligatawnysouprecipe.blogspot.co.uk/ for a simple but tasty recipe.

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