Quote from: Sverige on November 09, 2014, 07:27 AM
Or is it just to flavour the oil so it can be used in currie?
i think it's more as a preservative - they'd cook a big pot of the pre-cooked (of each type - lamb/beef/chicken/vegetables) and said that they would usually do them once a week on average, depending on how busy they were. after cooking they'd ladle it off it into ice cream tubs, complete with the oil, freeze half of those ice cream tubs in their chest freezers and keep the other half in the walk-in fridge, taking them out and leaving them in the kitchen as required. because the pre-cook is oily they would be fishing the bits of vegetables/lamb/beef/chicken as applicable of out of the oil, and invariably some of that flavoured oil would end up in the curry dishes, but i never saw them purposely use seasoned/used oil (apart from if their base wasn't as oily as it usually is, they'd sometimes take a chef spoons worth out of the fryer to start a dish off, but that was a rarity, usually the base was so oily the first thing to hit the pan was the oily base, then in with the garlic & ginger, methi, fresh coriander, meat or vegetables, any extras (like peppers or extra onions, tikka marinade etc), then a couple of ladles of base, heat through, then serve)