Rather than pre cooking chicken then freezing thawing out etc.
Assuming a curry base sauce is used heat it up then add chicken portions cook for around 8 mins then remove
Cook curry as your normal method adding chicken in last 5 mins to finish off you will get succulent fresh chicken every time also works for other meats adjust cooking time as required
Saves a lot of faffing around.
Try it out and lets have your comments
Seems perfectly logical to me, NO.
** Phil.
Each to their own but cooking in base sauce is the worst way to precook chicken in my opinion. I always could tell when takeaways did this and assiduously avoided them thereafter.
SS .......If you read the post you may notice the 1 st 4 words...........
Pre-cooking doesn't necessarily involve freezing and thawing. What you've described Ox is a simple method that I have used in the past and will again in the future.
I now always use the method you describe with a diluted Base Gravy to pre-cook chicken when I'm making Mango Chicken or other lightly spiced creamy dishes. I've found that full spiced pre-cook is not suited to the dish, which requires a very lightly spiced base gravy as well.
If I'm doing BIR style preparation I typically pre-cook chicken, lamb and vegetables. I usually use it all straight away, or at least from the fridge within a few days. I've rarely had the need to freeze any of it. For full-flavoured dishes I am a big fan of Misty Ricardo's methods but I also like the Kushi recipes and I've tried a couple of others including those from the different Balti books I have. These all produce perfectly acceptable dishes. The Balti Secrets 1 methods for "Par-cooked" meat and chicken are very basic. Nothing too fancy at all.
1 The Balti Secrets of the Birmingham Balti Company by Janet and Peter Lardner, 1997.
We all know Indian Restaurants pre cook for speed, especially needed for Lamb or whatever is being used as Lamb lol, does pre cooking actually impart a different texture / taste to cooking it from raw.
As we know speed is of the essence here so unless we ourselves are in a hurry or need to pre cook for logistical reasons do we need to precook.
I remember reading in one of pat chapmans books he said about cooking lamb in salted water for 45 mins to remove the dominant flavour of the lamb, personally i would prefer to use base than that but at the end its down to personal choice.
If a TA chef was cooking a one off chicken dish for a friend how do you think he / she would do it, pre cooked or raw?
Quote from: noble ox on February 11, 2020, 07:25 PM
SS .......If you read the post you may notice the 1 st 4 words...........
Yes, I partially misread your post (speed reading clearly not my fort
SS............Read the post again slowly ....You might notice cook chicken for 8 mins then finish off for 5 mins = 13 mins
Quote from: noble ox on February 12, 2020, 03:36 PMSS............Read the post again slowly ....You might notice cook chicken for 8 mins then finish off for 5 mins = 13 mins
NO : Read the post again slowly
Quote from: Peripatetic Phil on February 12, 2020, 05:06 PM
Quote from: noble ox on February 12, 2020, 03:36 PMSS............Read the post again slowly ....You might notice cook chicken for 8 mins then finish off for 5 mins = 13 mins
NO : Read the post again slowly
The one thing that has always bothered me about pre-cooking chicken is the flavour from poaching the chicken is lost. Pre-cooking it in base has the benefit of capturing that. The downside I imagine (although I have yet to try it) is that the chicken won't have the benefit of poaching in a salty, spiced liquid.
Think I'll have to try both at the same time to see if that really matters in the final dish.
Cheers for the idea!
Romain.......My best results have been to add 10% water to the base then cooking the chicken ,the water will soon reduce.....un-boned thighs cooked this way add some nice flavours .
Quote from: noble ox on February 15, 2020, 09:29 PM
Romain.......My best results have been to add 10% water to the base then cooking the chicken ,the water will soon reduce.....un-boned thighs cooked this way add some nice flavours .
I'm liking this concept more and more. When I cook homestyle I always use bone-in thighs and I don't ever pre-cook them. This has the makings of a good hybrid homestyle/restaurant style curry.
Cook the thighs. Remove them from the base and then proceed as you would for any gravy based curry. Nice!