Topic: CA's spiced oil

[livo]

I suspect you already have an expected outcome Phil.  I tend to agree, but I also await your result with interest.  I think I have just about read everything on this site on the topic, and followed any external links (including the dead one you revived).  It would appear that the only really notable (claimed) success in this was achieved by a couple of members who went and somehow procured reclaimed oil from their local.

[Peripatetic Phil]

Hard to know (by introspection) whether or not I have an expected outcome.  I certainly have a hope that it will add something (?depth?) but the real test will be to ask my wife to try it without telling her that it might taste different from a standard KD CM.  We shall see, but first I have to make some base.

** Phil.

[livo]

Had I read one of Naga's posts in the Chicken Ceylon thread properly and fully, I would have not asked him a question about this spiced oil "malarkey" in that thread. He has again kindly informed that he does not find it adds enough to the dish to warrant the additional "faffing about".  This adds to my understanding from all I've read.  Deliberately spicing oil obviously adds something in flavour to a dish and is a regular part of many dishes. BIR reclaimed oil smells like a BIR when it's used and it will certainly add some characteristic flavour to anything it's used in.  These are probably 2 distinctly different things, one being by design and the other by circumstance.

[Secret Santa]

A curry that is not almost covered in oil when cooking is over is not, to my mind, likely to turn out well.  "Cook until the oil comes out" is a very old curry apophthegm, and if not sufficient comes out, I add more.

Honestly Phil you've already stated the best method of obtaining spiced oil which is to liberally douse the curry you're currently making in oil and spoon off the excess at the end. Instant spiced oil, absolutely no faffing required. And as you rightly say, a curry cooked with niggardly quantities of oil is demonstrably lacking in the taste department. So you're killing two birds with one method.

I've been doing it this way for years and I'm pretty sure we'd find some reference to its importance in the early days of the forum. Only works when cooking savoury curries though. Trying it with a korma would be a very calorific disappointment as the oil would never separate enough.

The depth that this oil adds to a curry is unmistakable so I'm at a loss when people say it adds nothing.

By the way, apopthegm? That's a new one on me; I'll stick to aphorism, it's easier to spell!

[fried]

Ignore these 2 lobbyists for the sunflower oil industry. If you want spiced oil do it while pre-cooking your chicken or lamb. I'd use just enough oil to cook your curry. Nothing worse than a mouth full of grease. It's almost impossible to spoon of all the extra oil and get something edible.

How are you still alive Phil with your oil and salt addiction ?

[livo]

I haven't come across many, if any, reports that spiced oil adds nothing. There are reports of extra flavour or depth being minimal though.  The use of flavour infused oil would of course add something to a curry but it does not appear to have lived up to the early expectation of being that missing component in "The BIR taste".
I've used the reclaimed oil from various processes and been well pleased with the results. I've been equally happy with the curries made using fresh new oil. I would have to do as Phil intends or similar to really properly assess the merits of spiced oil. Side by side test with oil being the only variable.
SS, you make a very important point about use in savoury dishes only. Some of the milder curries I make do not suit it at all.

Maybe Phil is proof that the food warnings we receive are not always 100% accurate. 

[Peripatetic Phil]

How are you still alive Phil with your oil and salt addiction ?

No idea, and you forgot to mention the two or three 38gm tubes of Smarties a day !  (Not to mention the pure beef dripping that I fry or roast Western food in, the lard for cooking pancakes, the 1/4"-thick slices of butter on the toasted tea-cakes & crumpets, the Jersey cream in the coffee, and the fully-leaded milk that I seem to need  to drink after foods such as, Bovril).

[Secret Santa]

Ignore these 2 lobbyists for the sunflower oil industry.

Ohhhh, no,no,no!

Rapeseed oil only (virgin if you can afford it). Far better for the ticker if you have to use oil.


 

If you want spiced oil do it while pre-cooking your chicken or lamb.

Essentially the same thing as spooning excess from a curry, only definitely inferior. It has to be because the precook is essentially a boil wheres the curry cook is (to a greater degree) a frying technique and so releases more of the natural oils from the spices ... ergo tastier spiced oil. And as we know many restaurant/takeaways spoon the excess oil from the base sauce which again is inferior in my opinion.

I'd use just enough oil to cook your curry. Nothing worse than a mouth full of grease. It's almost impossible to spoon of all the extra oil and get something edible.

And yet so many delicious curries are served at restaurants bathed in excess oil!

How are you still alive Phil with your oil and salt addiction ?

Oil, salt and sugar ... well known preservatives.

[livo]

And the food scientists have cracked the formula for combining the 3 that triggers the primal instinct to crave more.