Conventional wisdom seems to hold that garlic and ginger paste should only be lightly fried to a "pale straw brown" or in the words of Julian from Curry 2 Go "just until the sizzling dies down and the water is evaporated". Lately I've been letting it cook further though to a deeper brown and haven't noticed any taste of burnt garlic of other negative results, rather it seems to help the underlying flavour of the dish.

Something to think about anyway. Just as the spices appear to be able to take more thorough cooking than some accounts would have you believe I think G&G paste can also take it. That leaves the third and final of the "holy trinity" of the early stages of most curries, the thinned tomato paste. Perhaps that can also be fried to a dark brown colour?  Well with all these variables involved is it any wonder no two curries ever seem to come out the same?

Its a good question nj, also regarding the actual amounts of G,G&G,tomato paste & MP. A bhuna/bhoona in my neck of the woods has a very distinct taste, or should have. It's clearly down to something simpler than any "bhooning" technique. It tastes like thoroughly cooked GG & quite a lot of it. In one of the Zaal vids, I think Az briefly hints at more GG for bhuna.? It may also be a dollop of some kind of paste in my locals  . Like the madras I've never nailed if perfectly yet.

Hi ELW,

Bhuna has been my favourite dish for years and I have found that only a handful of restaurants ever seem to get it right. Most flood it with tomato/tomato puree and it just becomes a bland awful attempt at this dish....

When I made my Chicken Bhuna which I posted on here recently, I had increased the garlic quite a bit from my original attempts. I have found that this has bought me quite close to a BIR Bhuna that is made properly but still not 100%. I also think that quite a lot of chopped fresh coriander has turned it up a notch or two as well....

Hope this helps....

Hi 976bar, yes it does help. Extra coriander would improve my efforts, now I think about it. We are definitely talking about the same flavour here. I noted your bhuna last year, but like so many others, never got round to it yet.

@nj .I'd also like to hear more thoughts on that initial cooking process & differing amounts of ingredients

This is a good point and it bothers me. I've always hand chopped garlic and ginger just before cooking it and I've never managed to get it to any stage of brown without getting the full-on burnt garlic bitterness, even when the visible pieces of garlic are just browing at the edges at which point I've rapidly cooled the pan.

Now I raised this again a few months ago and the advice was to make up the blend of garlic and ginger as it doesn't burn so easily. I plan to do this soon and can't really understand why this may be the case but I'm prepared to try.

I think a lot of BIR aroma is to do with garlic, but I couldn't really explain why.

Fresh coriander - yes I often chop coriander stalks into my curries in very short pieces like a couple of mm.
These retain a small aromatic mouth explosion even when cooked which I find the leaves lose altogether.

Paul