Topic: Who believes there is a secret ingredient to the curry base?

[pete]

I'm not sure if I have done this poll correctly.
But if it works, I really would like to know what the general consensus is.

[ghanna]

Dear Pete
from my previous experience with chefs  i am 100% sure that they are hiding something.
your goodself and the curry queen went to the same place and shown two totally different ingredients for the curry gravy , the proportion of the ingredients as well are  not right at all .
In one gravy they are using 2 onions ,1 carrot , 1 pepper with different spices.
In the other gravy they are using 2 pounds of onions ,1 carrot ,1 pepper  with just  curry powder .
Pete do you think this is right?
George  in a previous link said that  your chef showed you his gravy , the curry queen  chef showed her his gravy , and the restaurant gravy remained secret .
there is a very very nice taste missing i can not duplicate it  i cannot explain enough how nice is this taste, if they are telling us the truth why is our gravy missing that taste.
They are deceiving us ,getting our money ,showing us only the basic ingredients but not that very very important ingredients which make that huge difference.
Once i took a sample  from your gravy ( which use 600ml oil) to my restaurant and asked the chef about his opinion he told me the same as the other chef told you  it is nice  laughed and told me only salt is missing.
his assistance came after a few minutes  i asked him as well about the gravy  he was very honest and told me there is some thing missing, i asked him to tell me but he refused and told me  (SECRET ), i asked him again why then the other chef said it was o.k and the only thing was missing is salt  ?  he told me because if he said there is something missing you are going to ask him what is it and he don't want to tell you and the restaurant does not want to loose you as a good customer .he is just been diplomatic.
The restaurant owners are earning a lot from the curry gravy and as MR PAT CHAPMAN  said in his web page that the turn over for  the Indian restaurants in the UK  is ?2.5  billion per year. when they are earning this amount of money i don't think they will be willing to tell their secret  and i don't blame them but i want them to be honest and not deceiving us by telling us different ingredients and spices.
thanks
ghanna

[Yellow Fingers]

Pete, you yourself have seen several curries prepared by different curry house cooks. You've seen the ingredients and you've seen the techniques. The one thing you have not seen and nor I think has anyone else here, correct me if I'm wrong, is the making of their base sauce from raw ingredients to final product.

I honestly don't think a poll is even necessary, the evidence seems to weigh heavily on there being a secret ingredient and it can only be hidden in the base sauce.

As Sherlock Holmes said "when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth!"? ?

[Blondie]

I've tried, gently, to suggest that the chefs are witholding or deliberately changing something in the base recipe, for some time, but ha ha or I don't speak good English usually crop up somewhere. 

I too would relish the experience of a trip to a restaurant / takeaway kitchen, but we do not want to be conned.  We need to see a dish cooked from base to conclusion, so we know that EVERYTHING is being disclosed.  I know that time wise this is impossible in one evening, so, as I believe that the mystery is in the base sauce, I think that buying a base sauce from our locals and using our gained knowledge to complete the various dishes will confirm this, we should try this as our next step of elimination.  I personally have tried to buy base sauces from my locals (one of which I have used for almost 20 years) and they will not sell it to me.  To this end I will be out this weekend, and buy a base from anywhere that will sell me one, just to see if this is where "the taste" is and then we have narrowed our search.


I hope that this post makes some sense as I have the weekend off and have had a little bit of wine,

cheers all,

 Blondie

[ghanna]

hi,all
i try ed my self to buy the basic gravy different times but without luck .
their reason is .......   it does not taste nice by it self let us make you a tasty curry sauce instead.
have a very nice weekend all
thanks
ghanna

[adamski]

I think your all mad.

Curry Secret. Look at this way nearly every curry gravy recipe that has been posted here on this site is very very similar.

Wake up people there is no one secret ingredient, what the hell would it be?? and how could such a thing be kept so secret.

A secret so secret only hundreds of chefs all over the country know to the exclusion of everyone else.

The secret is there is no secret, I tried out Pete's gravy made a few curries, now they tasted as good as a take-away, the only
difference was and this is the secret, I cooked it, not the local-takeway. It's all in the mind.

Read again the article from the guy in the curry club, he details how the staff worked overnight to make the base sauce, he was there saw it all (at least that is the impression he gives). Unless the staff at this restaraunt were theatrical geniuses and the whole thing was staged (which I doubt very much) then what he saw and documented is exactly how thousands of Indian resteraunts and take-aways make curries every day.

Good luck on your search for the holy grail but I think you will be sadly disappointed.

Hey for all I know maybe there is a secret ingredient, but the only way it would ever be totally secret if it  was so awful and terrible an ingredient that to tell anyone other than someone in the trade would be to destroy the Indian take-aways for ever. Do you still want to know the secret???

[George]

...how could such a thing be kept so secret. A secret so secret only hundreds of chefs all over the country know to the exclusion of everyone else.

Good point, even though the jury is still out for me on whether we actually have a complete list of all the potential ingredients any of these places would ever use in a base sauce.

There are thousands and thousands of Indian restaurants and take-aways in the UK, with perhaps four times as many chefs, plus retired people and many others who have prepared the elusive base sauce. How can anyone keep such a secret amongst that huge group? It's not like the spice for Kentucky Fried Chicken, the sauce for a Big Mac or the precise recipe for Sacher Torte. These recipes are each owned by a single organisation who no doubt carefully control the release of pre-packed mixes to franchisees and others, or bake a cake at only one hotel in Vienna. There is no such agreement in the UK restaurant industry. I'm amazed there is no genuine 'curry secret' book already on the shelves.

My suggestions for things to try would be (in no particular order) monosodium glutumate, fenugreek leaves, and worcestershire sauce. The latter stuff was seen to be used in a huge range of dishes when the sudan 1 list was published. It must be worth a try. L&P say on the bottle that it 'adds instant richness'. Split up a batch of basic sauce and try adding different things to different (small) samples, always comparing it to a commercial 'control' sample. I suggest a commercial sample of base sauce is a pre-requisite for any assessment.

Nobody responded to my question on whether the smell from you house matches the smell from an Indian restaurant when you are cooking base sauce. At other forums, people have suggested the main element of the Indian Restaurant smell is fenugreek. Is it?

One way to establish what's in the base sauce might be to have it tasted by someone with a very keen sense of taste or a skilled (western) chef. Say: 'what's the difference between my sauce and this commercial control sample?'

Regards
George

[adamski]

I can't stop thinking about this.

Lets look back to when we had no Indian establishments. The first guys arive from Bangladesh, they must have had a hard
time finding the ingredients they needed to make the food they were used to.

I did read a book about a family growing up in England after moving from Indian and the food featured quite a bit, they used to do
things like make baked beans on toast but spice it up with some onions and Garam Masla.

Maybe the reason for the taste is something more common to the west than the east?

Now I'm starting to believe in the secret.

On the other hand after spending all day yesterday cooking a base sauce and making myself a curry the wife walked in last night
and said the house smelt like the local Indian curry house.

Fenugreek leaves do have that sort of smell but I when you walk past a resteraunt in the evening there is a distinct pungent smell in the air, and I think it's this smell that is the key to the flavour.

[Mark J]

I think your all mad.

Curry Secret. Look at this way nearly every curry gravy recipe that has been posted here on this site is very very similar.

Wake up people there is no one secret ingredient, what the hell would it be?? and how could such a thing be kept so secret.

A secret so secret only hundreds of chefs all over the country know to the exclusion of everyone else.

The secret is there is no secret, I tried out Pete's gravy made a few curries, now they tasted as good as a take-away, the only
difference was and this is the secret, I cooked it, not the local-takeway. It's all in the mind.

Read again the article from the guy in the curry club, he details how the staff worked overnight to make the base sauce, he was there saw it all (at least that is the impression he gives). Unless the staff at this restaraunt were theatrical geniuses and the whole thing was staged (which I doubt very much) then what he saw and documented is exactly how thousands of Indian resteraunts and take-aways make curries every day.

Good luck on your search for the holy grail but I think you will be sadly disappointed.

Hey for all I know maybe there is a secret ingredient, but the only way it would ever be totally secret if it? was so awful and terrible an ingredient that to tell anyone other than someone in the trade would be to destroy the Indian take-aways for ever. Do you still want to know the secret???

I pretty much agree with everything said here, my feeling is the secret taste is in the oil reuse from the curry gravy, so yes in a way this is a secret ingredient.

I would be happy to be proved wrong but I strongly doubt that there is a missing ingredient that somone is suddenly going to find "hey folks, just add 100ml of shampoo to the base sauce" and everyone lives happily ever after.

[Mark J]

And on another note if I'd been going to the same takeaway for 20 years and they wouldnt let me have some base sauce I'd tell them Ill be going elsewhere!

When I asked to get into the kitchen of my local restaurant they were very cool about it but if they had refused I wouldnt have taken no for an answer, I go there every Thursday night without fail.