Thanks Bob. Same to you.

Looks really delicious.

Apologies if you've been asked this 100 times, but do you have the marinade recipe anywhere please?

Quote from: Kashmiri Bob on October 16, 2025, 12:47 PMProportions aside, reckon I know exactly how they have been put together, including the "signature" ingredient(s).

More details, please! Even if it's just speculation I like to hear about how different places put their dishes together.

The sea bass looks especially fantastic, Rob.

Any chance of your recipe(s) please?

Quote from: Kashmiri Bob on February 17, 2025, 12:31 PMHere is a detailed review of the LA Diner meat:

https://shawarmapolice.com/2017/08/04/farmfoods-l-a-diner-doner-meat/

Oh no, Bob - did you read that review? It gives it a score of 0/10 and says:

QuoteIt has the texture of a graveyard
Tastes like existential dread
When you open the packet, it smells like someone has farted on it
There are absolutely no redeeming features about this product. None whatsoever.

As beautiful as the dish looks, I find Farmfoods' doner meat tastes really terrible. Ditto for all the other supermarket ones I've tried (Iceland/Food Warehouse, Home Bargains, and two others from Farmfoods under the "Jahan" and "Speedy Chef" brands (both produced by Istanbul Doner which also produces catering doner)). I also bought a 5KG catering box of Ali Baba brand pre-cut doner and it was equally disappointing.

They all use mechanically separated chicken as the main ingredient which always tastes rotten to me.

Good doner should be lamb and/or beef. Only the cheap stuff uses chicken because it's dirt cheap.

In my experience if you want good doner at home you either have to make it yourself or buy from a known good takeaway.

A few other thoughts: I had a "real" (takeaway) bhuna tonight for the first time in a while and I was pretty shocked at the difference between it and my recent home-made curries.

The takeaway bhuna was thinner and wetter than I make my own. Not too much floating oil, but the container was stained plenty well which probably means there was lots of oil mixed in with the base.

The taste was the real interesting part. Compared to my own version it was much less rich in flavour. Instead there was a pronounced kind of sourness and a kind of sharp, tangy feeling to it. Not quite like lemon juice, but almost. My own curries definitely don't have this sourness. I'm thinking the key difference was maybe tomatoes. I tend to use tomatoes straight from the tin. Maybe I should be blending them with plenty of water and perhaps try adding methi and garlic like I've seen Latif's Inspired (YouTube) do.

The smell of the curry was also less rich than my own - dare I say mine might even smell better than this one did - however there's definitely still something missing from my own which I still can't identify. You know when you get poppadoms and the bag is all oily? There's a smell to the bag (or that oil) which I think I can also detect in the curry. Maybe they're using reclaimed fryer oil which they've previously used to fry the poppadoms. We all know that onion bhaji and pakora oil is used in a lot of curries but this smelled different. I would love to know what takeaways do with the "regular" fryer oil (chips etc.) - I can't believe they all just chuck it out.

Quote from: livo on February 06, 2025, 08:10 AMThey probably use a very bland base gravy

You're right. I've asked for a portion of base gravy from my local and it tasted really very bland, just like a basic vegetable soup. Hardly a trace of spice or anything else. It was also very light yellow in colour which I imagine means it goes into all curries including the mildest.

Quote from: livo on February 06, 2025, 08:10 AMI make mixed powder, but I'm finding that I use less and less of it

Interestingly I've always found mixed powder a bit of a questionable ingredient. I'm in Scotland and I believe there's a theory that Scottish BIR doesn't use any mixed powder at all - or at least uses it sparingly. From my personal experience recreating dishes I would say that's true. Scottish BIR more heavily on richness from fat and condiments (and food colouring).

Quote from: livo on February 06, 2025, 08:10 AMI have just found the delight of Deghi Mirch

I thought it was just like a mixture of paprika and regular chilli powder, no? Does it taste noticeably different?

Quote from: livo on February 06, 2025, 08:10 AMHotel style uses up to 7 different gravies

I've seen many videos of hotel style cooking but have yet to try any because of the amount of prep. The yellow gravy does look very close to a regular BIR base gravy . The makhani gravy and chop masala I could see being used in BIR places, but again maybe not Scottish ones?

The YouTube channel "Travels in India, London & the UK" has plenty of videos of London restaurants using Indian-style gravies, though.

Quote from: Peripatetic Phil on February 06, 2025, 11:01 AMOne thing you might like to try, however, is to use Bassar curry masala where a recipe calls for hot chilli powder

I remember trying it years ago and finding it too overpowering, but maybe I used too much. I could definitely see how it would provide a different, poignant taste though.

Recently I've been getting a bit bored of my own curries - not because they're bad, but because they all taste quite similar.

Obviously I don't mean my korma tastes the same as my madras, however I do find that my curries tend to fall within two or three groups, flavour-wise:

* Creamy (korma, some chasni, CTM, makhani etc)
* Tomatoey/rich (rogan josh, madras, bhuna, dopiaza, jalfrezi, jaipuri, karahi, balti)
* Sharp/tangy (achari, some chasni)

Even when I try to vary the flavours by adding more of a certain element (e.g. peppers) the underlying curry itself still tastes pretty similar.

To my palate, a bhuna can taste almost identical to a karahi, which can be only slightly different from a jaipuri/jalfrezi, which can be almost identical to a balti, and a madras is like a hotter rogan josh.

Does anyone have any techniques they use to really make each curry stand out?

How do the restaurants do it?

As to the topic of this thread I should say that I'm making curries with a BIR taste most of the time, but it's not quite 100%, and that's why I asked if anyone else has got the consistency down. The missing pieces for me probably just come down to things like ingredient brands, spice ratios, and strength of the curry base etc.

My view is that the fundamental BIR taste is a combination of onions, GG paste, spices, and reclaimed oil. How accurately this taste can be reproduced at home will vary from person to person because of their own preferences and the techniques/ingredients used by their local curry houses, but I definitely think those four elements make up the majority of the "secret".