Curry Recipes Online
Curry Chat => Lets Talk Curry => Topic started by: livo on October 31, 2014, 11:24 PM
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OK, so I've just done my first batch of pre-cooks in the Kushi style and what a huge advancement it made to my search for perfection. If you haven't yet done it, you certainly should. The dishes I made from the pre-cooked Lamb, Chicken and Vegetables were delicious and by far much better than other pre-cooks I've tried.
The question I pose is one that I suppose is self evident really.
What does everybody do with the left over cooking liquid?
I hate waste but yesterday I didn't have the inclination to keep any of it but 3 times I reluctantly poured these rich juices down the sinkhole. It strikes me as being very poor management and I'm thinking that surely these spiced soups must be useful in some way.
Any thoughts?
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Hi Livo I'm glad you've also had the Kushi "epiphany". I have also found that the pre-cooked meat means you have lots of left over sauce. I've tried adding all the sauce to the end dish and tried adding just a little with mixed results...What I tend to do nowadays is make half the recommend amount of sauce proportionate to however much meat in grams/kilos you are using and cook it slowly in an open pan until it reduces right down to a thick sauce. That way you literally have just enough juice to coat the meat which is enough to add extra flavour to the dish without adding too much liquid which dilutes the finished dish. And obviously you don't end up with all that waste.
PS. I take it you've not long been using the Kushi recipes. Do you think they get you closer to the goal than most?
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Any thoughts?
Instant(ish) biryani. Just add the pre-cooked's. (Meat and/or Veg) :)
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Yep biriyani....or you could add some cooked potatoes and coriander to it to make a kind of Bombay potato...
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Reduce the excess cooking liquid down till it's concentrated and put it into your next batch of base as stock
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PS. I take it you've not long been using the Kushi recipes. Do you think they get you closer to the goal than most?
Yes and yes. First time using the Kushi and certainly made a huge difference. The pleasure I had from cooking and eating was a game changer for me. Anybody who hasn't done it yet needs to straight away.
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Yup! :)
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i think Sverige is most likely to be right.
i've tried adding the residue to dishes and it dont work - takes me further from BIR.
ive not tried adding it to base and dont really plan to.
ive also found that "posh" methods of pre cooking whilst making the meat taste better have limited effect on the eating of the finished dish.
in short i simple pre cook in salt, turmeric and water.
i think it's as someone else said on the chemistry of cooking - the method/technique of cooking is far more important than the ingredients (with the exception of tikka).
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I think in this case some of the sauce is key to the flavour of the overall dish. Due to the amount of garlic and ginger in it. But this is definitely in part to how it is cooked. Kushi recipes utilise the Tarka/baghaar technique which makes a big difference. I think lots of gently fried garlic is a big key to bir flavour. Hence why JBs base is so popular.
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Some interesting comments here. Next time I'll reserve the pre-cook liquids and do some experimentation with using them for different things. I didn't add any liquids from the pre-cook into the dishes other than what was clinging to the meats, but I must say that the process made significant difference to the dishes overall.
JerryM, I've tried simpler methods of pre-cook and always been underwhelmed by them.
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I don't include whole spices in the Bangladeshi base gravy I use. They are introduced via the pre-cooks. Consequently the pre-cook recipe/technique is central to my efforts. I'd go as far as saying (for me) the pre-cooks are in fact more important than the base gravy.
Rob :)
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I'd go as far as saying (for me) the pre-cooks are in fact more important than the base gravy.
Rob :)
After my most recent results I'd have to join you in that.
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I've tried simpler methods of pre-cook and always been underwhelmed by them.
i've not experimented with pre cook liquids very much (felt it was a blind alley).
my observation is down to trying to analyse the finished dish and identify what characteristics make it taste good. its why i make each dish many times without any meat - the taste needs to stack up on its own (the spice, the base, the recipe ingredients). its the rest of the dish ingredients that are not right if reliant on pre cook.
i have no axe to grind eitherway. i guess as Bob is demonstrating there are many ways to skin the cat so to speak. one for personal preference.
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When I order a take away, the sauce in a chicken tikka curry tastes exactly the same as in a chicken curry, chicken cooked 2 different ways but the sauce is the same
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its why i make each dish many times without any meat - the taste needs to stack up on its own (the spice, the base, the recipe ingredients). its the rest of the dish ingredients that are not right if reliant on
Hi JerryM
I could not agree more I cook the same tests, a dish or gravy should stand up without pre cooked ingredients.
It should taste good alone with oil,spice,garlic and sauce in the first place.
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I find that adding too much of the pre-cook sauce adds too much flavour. I recently did my standard Viceroy chicken precook and used it to make a Madras, the addition of a lot of whole spice flavour tastes good, but might not necessarily be what you're looking for if you're trying to make indentical reproductions of BIR curries.
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its why i make each dish many times without any meat - the taste needs to stack up on its own (the spice, the base, the recipe ingredients). its the rest of the dish ingredients that are not right if reliant on pre cook.
A very good point J. I see where you are wit this, and it's much cheaper to do this as well. I can see a lot of sauce only dishes coming up.
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I found the pre cook sauce too strong to. It also can contain seed. Hence the conclusion that if using better to add when making base.
As for trying to replicate a dish. I Research all the recipe I can find. Guess a good starting point then change 1 off variable repeatedly making say 7 dishes over a week. I may even repeat until I get a taste that fits BIR. I generally eat most and chuck very little.
I find you need to make a dish repeatedly in this way to understand what each ingredient does. Even the proportions.
I often get a take out to do side by side comparison.
It's only when I'm happy that I addin meat and try out on the family.
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Looks like a plan J.
I'm trying all sorts of different things at the moment and enjoying everything. Some dishes are better than others obviously, but I haven't needed to bin anything yet.
My family are just getting a bit over curry so I have to mix it all up a bit or buy a bigger freezer.
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As for trying to replicate a dish. I Research all the recipe I can find. Guess a good starting point then change 1 off variable repeatedly making say 7 dishes over a week.
I often get a take out to do side by side comparison.
It's only when I'm happy that I addin meat and try out on the family.
Yep totally agree
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Interesting thread this - and there are probably as many answers as there are chefs. The first place I worked in pre-cooked the chicken / lamb and then reduced the cooking liquor to a stodge that they then tipped into the cooked meat. If you ever scraped a pan with a spoon, this was heaven. I tried it myself but kept catching the stodge on the pan, so now we just keep the protein in the cooking liquid and spoon a chef's spoon of the liquor into each portion. The enhancement to the flavour of the sauce is considerable - so much so that we now add veg stock to some vegetarian dishes to build up the umami in the same way.
Which brings me to not one but several occasions on which I have asked chefs what they do with the pre-cook liquor, to be told that it goes into the gravy. I once asked if this might be an issue for the dishes on the menu with a green "V" against them, and he replied "Makes vegetarian taste better." Hmmmm.....
I have heard stories of it being poured down the sink but can't say I have seen this. If true it's a terrible waste.
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Most modern precooks I know today, are left in the cooking stock and is added, along with the portion
of meat to final dishes, until the meat is used up. One of my Chef friends refers to it as curry medicine.
But in my own experience, keeping most of the meat in its cooking liquid prevents the meat from drying
out or even a thin coating keeps it moist for longer.
I
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And it looks great.