The idea of cooking curry at home might sound a daunting one but with a little planning best results can be achieved. Cooking Indian cuisine requires lots of practice and experience. With dedication and guidance, one can learn to develop flavours and aromas. Here are our tips to help you refine your cookery skills. You can learn to cook a curry just like a Pro.
The best way to learn cooking delicious curry is to keep as simple as possible before you get used to some basic cooking techniques and understanding the mathematics of flavourings and combinations.
Complexity is the enemy of the execution. So, simple and straight forward curry is a good start.
Prepare your ingredients beforehand
The hassle-free cooking process needs well-prepared ingredients before attempting cooking a curry. Plan your cooking ingredients, equipment and measurements to avoid stress. Clean your meat cuts, vegetables prepared, purees and pastes ready to be used.
This will significantly improve your chances to be successful and achieve desired results.
Understand the use of your use of spices
Spices are the building blocks of any curry dish. Even a little overcooking will kill your efforts and undercooking will defeat the purpose of adding them. Frying whole spices will infuse deep flavours in your sauce which is essential for any curry base. It’s important that you carefully fry them avoiding burning them.
Ground spices should only be sparingly used. It’s best practice to fry them for 10-20 seconds with a splash of water to void burning them and ruining the curry base. A wet ingredient such as tomatoes, yoghurt, tamarind or coconut milk should go in at this stage without much delay.
The whole process of cooing spices must be done at low temperature.
You can further enhance flavour in whole spices by dry roasting them before grinding them to a powdered form or paste. This helps get rid of any excess moisture and release aromas. The essential oil present in whole spices is released in your sauce base giving out the unique taste and aromas.
Marinate your meats and vegetables
This is by far an essential way to create a sensational curry like an expert chef. Marinating your meats, poultry, fish or vegetables will overall improve your curry dish by imparting seasoning properly and help tenderize.
Marinade consisting yoghurt, vinegar, lemon juice with seasoning like salt, pepper, chilli powder etc. will interact with other ingredients to draw out new flavours.
Follow the ingredients cooking process and stages
Any curry needs to be layered with flavours. To get this right one needs to practice patience. ‘’Hurry does not make a Good curry’’ lol. Introduce ingredients in order the recipe calls for and patiently cook each ingredient for an appropriate time. Sauteing ginger, garlic, onions to a varying length of time can result in a different taste and texture.
Adding ingredients in stages and cooking each of them will bring out individual flavours of each one which will make your final product a genuinely delicious.
Cooking Indian cuisine is a very satisfying and holistic experience in many ways. It’s a way to find joy and happiness. Anyone can cook a curry with little patience and practice. Rewards will be delicious for sure.