The Curry Secret reveals tips and tricks for you to make Indian restaurant or takeaway style curries at home.
Having tried home made curries with varying degrees of success, I was in search of a recipe for different curry sauce, more like what the restaurants and takeaways produce.
While authentic Indian curries have their own market, there is something very different about the restaurant or takeaway style of curry. They are not authentic Indian by any means, but they are delicious and well suited to the western palate.
Until now, I have found it really difficult to try to duplicate restaurant style curry sauces, but then I found the small book called The Curry Secret by Kris Dhillon. It’s about 20 years old but apparently still selling in large volumes. Being this old, you can easily pick up a new copy of The Curry Secret for very little money.
Although there are no pictures in the book, it doesn’t really need them. This book is trying to help the home cook to create their own restaurant-style curries. And if you’re reading the book, you already know what restaurant and takeaway curries look like.
So far I have made a few lamb and chicken dishes from the book The Curry Secret and I have to say I am very impressed. There is a bit of work involved in making the initial batch of generic curry sauce. This is the sauce that will form the base of all the curries. After all, that’s how your local restaurant or takeaway does it. They make a large batch of a base sauce and then add ingredients to it to come up with the curry you ordered. You didn’t think they cooked every single dish from scratch every time?
But once you have made a batch, you can freeze it and use as required in the future. Each of the curries seem to make use of varying multiples of Cups or 150ml amounts of the sauce, so a good idea is to freeze it in batches of 1 Cup or 150ml. That way you can get 1, 2 or 3 portions from your freezer, whatever you need, without having to defrost more than necessary.
It is a very good idea to reserve a small amount of the sauce, a procedure that is described in the book, to cook your lamb or chicken in.
Another top tip – If you are planning to cook lamb dishes, you will know from the restaurant meals and takeaways that you enjoy, that the lamb is falling apart, really tender. To make your recipes have the same effect, it’s all about slow cooking the lamb. To achieve this falling apart texture, you may need to cook your lamb for longer than described in the book. For example, I got some good quality diced lamb from the supermarket and cooked it slowly for about an hour and a half. This might seem like a long time, but again, you can freeze whatever lamb you don’t use, and it will be there ready to defrost and use the next time. So freeze in batches.
So if you want to try cooking restaurant-style Indian meals at home, The Curry Secret is the book to use. Available to Buy Now on Amazon.