Oil or Ghee

[xPatx]

I have tried cooking a curry using oil and seems to come out alot better than when I tried with Ghee.  With the ghee it seemed to come out rather sweet.  Is this the ghee or some thing I'm doing wrong?

[Curry King]

Hi,

A lot of your standard BIR's will just use cheap as you can get oil, not sure if it's the ghee causing your sweetness as I don't use it at all.

cK

[Chilli Prawn]

Yes butter Ghee will add a degree of sweetness and richness.  CK is right though most restaurants use KTC oil and Ghee is reserved for speciality dishes and sweets.

CP

[Vinda looo]

Ive been using Crisp and Dry, veg oil.

[Gendie]

I use vegetable ghee everytime when making curries, (not in the base sauce) its benefits over other cooking oils is
it cooks at highter temperature's and holds the flavours better, and i find theres less spitting of the sauce, nothing worse than a piping hot chilli blob in the eye 2 mins before you sit down to enjoy your grub.

and its healthier :p

[King Prawn]

Olive oil is a very healthy alternative to the cheap stuff.
KP(V)

[Cory Ander]

Olive oil is a very healthy alternative to the cheap stuff.
KP(V)

....as I understand it, olive oil is not really recommended (for cooking curries) for two reasons:

• it doesn't get hot enough...the main reason
• it has a very distinctive (maybe overpowering) taste

As Gendie points out, ghee gets hottest and, as CK and CP point out, most BIRs use cheap vegetable oil.

Regards,

[King Prawn]

• it doesn't get hot enough...the main reason
• it has a very distinctive (maybe overpowering) taste

Point 1 would be true for a commercial cooker, not sure about a domestic one. I would have thought it would be identical to other oils over a domestic heat source.

Point 2 is true but the other ingredients and spices would make it hard to tell if it was cooked properly from the start and not added into the dish at a later stage (as with mediterranean cooking).

KP(V)

[Yousef]

I would only ever advise using Oil, not Olive Oil.
Beware that oil can hold up to 100g of fat per 100ml, which is amazingly bad for you.

Try to get the ones that lower cholesterol and stuff........

S

[DARTHPHALL]

I have used the light coloured Olive Oil in many dishes & i have found it to be OK, this may not fit in with many opinions but if you haven't tried it , give it a go.