Hi,

An Indian restaurant described its curry flavor as smokey, so I checked this out and found that this flavor addition is common practice at some Asian homes. 

One method is to insert a small steel bowl in the center of the finished curry and add a 'live' coal or charcoal in the bowl.  Add a knob of Ghee (the melted ghee gives off the smoke) and then cover the pan for about 10 minuets.  Remove bowl and serve.  I tried it three times but couldn't really get any appreciable difference??

Anybody got experience of this?

Also would the same effect come from smoked paprika (which i was told never to use in an Indian curry dish !!) or maybe Moti elaichi?

Thoughts / advice please.

Cheers Sam

I have used this method. Done correctly it is good but it is very easy to overdo and overpower the dish. Tomorrow I will provide a link to a recipe that uses the exact process you describe.

I'm using tablet now without access to my recipes.

thanks, looking forward to it.

https://www.archanaskitchen.com/arabian-chicken-mandi-recipe-yemeni-style-rice-chicken
This recipe uses the exact method you mention. The first time I cooked it I thought I didn't get the charcoal hot enough but it was delicious. The second time I really had the charcoal burning hot and the smoking was overdone.

just checked it out and that's it.

Would they do that in a restaurant or would they use maybe smoked paprika / black cardamom / some other spice / special technique?

really intrigued! 

I couldn't tell you what different restaurants might do. I guess this method is a possibility for similar biryani style dishes. A lot of smokey flavour would come from charcoal tandoor cooking. I put charcoal in my gas fired Pakistani steel tandoor for chicken and lamb. I don't think spices, even smoked Paprika, will provide the same level of smoke flavour achieved using this method.  Artificial smoke flavouring is available but I've never used it. I do hot smoke fish and I doubt artificial flavour will be anywhere near the real thing.

Where I live we have what's called liquid smoke. It's the distillate  of vapour from wood smoke. Highly diluted, it tastes like the smoke flavour in commercial American style BBQ sauce if you are familiar with that.

It is potent stuff. A drop or two goes a long way. I've never tried it with Indian but I would expect it to be completely overpowering.