Curry Recipes Online
Beginners Guide => Hints, Tips, Methods and so on.. => Cooking Methods => Topic started by: noble ox on February 11, 2020, 02:32 PM
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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
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Seems perfectly logical to me, NO.
** Phil.
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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.
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SS .......If you read the post you may notice the 1 st 4 words...........
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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.
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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?
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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
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SS............Read the post again slowly ....You might notice cook chicken for 8 mins then finish off for 5 mins = 13 mins
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SS............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
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SS............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
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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!
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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 .
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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!