Curry Recipes Online
Curry Chat => Lets Talk Curry => Topic started by: Invisible Mike on December 12, 2015, 03:55 PM
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Do you ever make your favourite base you've made it 100 times before, you follow the recipe exactly, cook it for the required amount of time, blend it etc etc but it just tastes wrong? Bitter and harsh but no reason why? You persevere and make a curry with it regardless and it just tastes bloody awful!
I'm sure somebody here knows what I'm talking about. What do you put it down to and how do you salvage such disasters?
Cheers
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Try cooking your already cooked base again for a while, see if it improves on flavour.
Onions can take different amounts of time to cook and become sweet and the heat levels play a part if cooking for a said amount of time only.
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Onions vary in strength. It may be the recipe you use normally works because the onions you've been using are mild, but this time you bought some stronger onions which developed a bitter flavour.
The fix would be to cook them for longer, they will mellow and sweeten.
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You've made the IDENTICAL BASE 100 times, thats impressive ;) (which One?)
If its rubbish, You can't salvage it, tip it down the loo and make No.101 ;D
cheers Chewy
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I've made bases that are less sweet, or seem a bit less savoury, I'm sure my taste buds are curried out. Never made one that's been bitter. Do you add a garlic tarka?
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You've made the IDENTICAL BASE 100 times, thats impressive ;) (which One?)
If its rubbish, You can't salvage it, tip it down the loo and make No.101 ;D
cheers Chewy
Yep exactly 100 times chewy! :)
I've made bases that are less sweet, or seem a bit less savoury, I'm sure my taste buds are curried out. Never made one that's been bitter. Do you add a garlic tarka?
Yep, garlic and ginger fried gently, then mix powder, then tomato pur?e and boiling water then add it to the onions, cook for another hour then blend....
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I went through a phase about a year ago when I could do no right. I binned 3 consecutive pots of gravy, and all the curries I made from the 4th were complete pants too. Don't know why to this day...
Regards Mick
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I think as Andy and Sverige have said, the onions even after over 3 hours in this case were undercooked. Just goes to show, there are no set times on cooking. Onions differ, they are done when they are done. Over spicing is another cause of ruined bases too I find.
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I think as Andy and Sverige have said, the onions even after over 3 hours in this case were undercooked.
Where an earth do you get this from? 3 hours? You're kidding right?
And what makes you think the base was at fault?
More often than not things go wrong at the final dish cooking stage, not the base gravy. Base gravy is just a lightly spiced onion soup. And there's no way jose that onions should be undercooked after 3 hours.
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Spiceyyokoono. I've made enough bases to know when one tastes wrong, even before making a dish with it.
The harsh, overpowering flavour meant the suggestion it may have been undercooked was a feasible one.
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MM just ignore the trolls, they pop across occasionally when they feel brave enough , they soon disappear again to share any info with their leader. :D
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I think as Andy and Sverige have said, the onions even after over 3 hours in this case were undercooked.
Where an earth do you get this from? 3 hours? You're kidding right?
And what makes you think the base was at fault?
More often than not things go wrong at the final dish cooking stage, not the base gravy. Base gravy is just a lightly spiced onion soup. And there's no way jose that onions should be undercooked after 3 hours.
[moderated - personal insult]. You are of course, highly likely to be correct. Anything else doesn't make common sense. I've never cooked onions for much longer than 40 minutes and the base sauce always tastes far too good for the onions or anything else to be undercooked. Until this forum is cleared of people who don't like to hear alternative points of view, then it will continue going round in circles and getting nowhere.
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spiceyokooko - just ignore the trolls like Madrasandy. Until this forum is cleared of people who don't like to hear alternative points of view, then it will continue going round in circles and getting nowhere.
Classic George [moderated]
MM never originally stated how long he had cooked his onions, he described what was wrong and I suggested recooking the base gently as this can help the flavour develop (as per restaurant kitchen), he asked for advice , I gave him advice , end of ;)
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I never cook my base for more than 50 mins and the onion are always cooked.
I only make a small qty of base using roughly 500g onions made fresh weekly.
A restaurant chef once told me whilst looking at a medium sized saucepan "you only need to boil for 45mins or until you can cut the onions with a chef spoon".
The only time I found was getting a nasty sort of bitter taste was when I was using green pepper.
Nick.
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Is your garlic/ginger pre-minced store bought kind?.....I find this, especially the garlic can add a weird bitter taste to currys if the jars ar'nt so fresh
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Is your garlic/ginger pre-minced store bought kind?.....I find this, especially the garlic can add a weird bitter taste to currys if the jars ar'nt so fresh
For me I use fresh but have the frozen blocks of each as a back up. The jar stuff annoys me for starters when it spits all over the kitchen
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Yea, I've never had any issues with homemade minced g/g but had a long battle with identifying where a weird taste was coming from a long time back....turned out to be the store bought minced garlic with all its preservatives.
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I must admit to having a jar of the commercial stuff in the fridge as a back up. But i would certainly not use it for cooking curries . Comes in handy when small quantities are required though, like when prepping keema kebab mince, samosa filling or onion bhajis when i haven't got any fresh.
Like Gav I now have the frozen garlic and ginger blocks in the freezer. As there's no preservative i use these all the time for convenience, just mixing up the desired ratio of each, covering any left overs with oil and keeping in the fridge. I think it was Chewy who first posted about these quite some time ago.