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

[pete]

Still got the bag?

Pete, you have bought base sauces, did they have 'that taste' in them?

I ditched the bag after the cancer scare.
I also ditched all my Sudan 1 products, a couple of years ago, when there was that scare.
Now as for this base sauce.
I asked for the base sauce and I bought a Rhogan Josh at the same time.
The base sauce was not the same flavour as the Rhogan Josh sauce.
Both had "the flavour"
You could have just added pre cooked veg or meat and it would have tasted like a complete curry
I think it comes from salvaging the oil from cooked curries.
I have seen the oil being spooned back into the base pot.
I don't want it to be that but I am running out of iideas.
I spoke to a chef in Cornwall the other day.
He wouldn't give away a thing.
He kept on going on about secrets.
But he did say to see the curry gravy cooked I would have to be there for about four hours.
No way would he have let me in.
And I know his business is very slow at the moment.
I offered to pay as well.
He said even the bar staff who had been there for 18 months don't know how to do it.
They love to cloak this in mistry, don't they?

[Mark J]

One of the reasons for the mystery could well be because the secret ingredient is quite unsavoury? e.g. MSG? or reused oil

[Yellow Fingers]

There was meant to be a cancer link to msg.
I stopped using it a few years back.

Pete if you are worried about cancer don't eat anything in a curry house that is red in colour. The colourings used are ponceau, tartrazine and sunset yellow. They are all carcinogens and tartrazine in particular has been known to kill asthmatics. There was a report that said some places exceeded the recommended use by ten or more times!

[Yellow Fingers]

One of the reasons for the mystery could well be because the secret ingredient is quite unsavoury? e.g. MSG? or reused oil

I suggested this earlier, see my onion skin post!

[Yellow Fingers]

I had a bag of msg which I tried in various recipes.
I noticed no marked difference.

Pete, did you put it in at the oil stage so that it fried, or later on when there was sauce so that it boiled? This can sometimes lead to a different flavour effect.

Has anyone who has been into a restaurant kitchen ever noticed two bowls of white stuff in their ingredients that perhaps you would have just assumed were both salt, but one might have been msg?

[pete]

Pete, did you put it in at the oil stage so that it fried, or later on when there was sauce so that it boiled? This can sometimes lead to a different flavour effect.

Has anyone who has been into a restaurant kitchen ever noticed two bowls of white stuff in their ingredients that perhaps you would have just assumed were both salt, but one might have been msg?

I put the msg in with the water.
So it boiled together
As for the two white bowls
I was told one was salt the other coconut.
And coconut powder does look like that.
I checked it out at my Asian supermarket

Going back to the idea of cooking in bulk affecting the flavour.
I must admit that I couldn't really see why, even though Pat Chapman had mentioned it and a takeaway chef had said so too
But..........
Assuming that you start the recipe with oil cooking garlic/ginger.
And add everything else to it.
You would have litres of oil in the pot
LITRES!!
That means anything added would be deep fried.
That would affect it considerably.
What do you think?

[Yellow Fingers]

You would have litres of oil in the pot
LITRES!!
That means anything added would be deep fried.
That would affect it considerably.
What do you think?

In any cuisine, long simmering is always associated with dishes where meat is involved because it tenderises and flavours the meat and also brings the meat flavour into the dish. For the base sauce we're talking about simmering what amounts to a spiced vegetable stew for four hours or more! No meat, as far as we know, is used.

There would be no possible reason for this....unless there is some ingredient in their base sauce that requires prolonged simmering to break down its structure, or extract its flavour. So it goes back to things we've already mentioned like including chicken carcass perhaps. It would have to be carcass, so that it could be removed easily before blending and of course some of the meat would make its way into the base and get blended too! But I think this is a step too far, they might not worry too much about serving veggies a base sauce containing a stock cube, but would they really add whole meat?

Can you think of anything else that would require this amount of cooking to have an effect? If so you probably have the secret ingredient.

On the other hand if the base sauce is just a vegetable stew and there really isn't a missing ingredient then four hours cooking will make little difference compared to one hours cooking for example. So why do they cook it for so long?

When you say 'litres of oil' do you mean in the base sauce? There's no frying going on once the water is added to the pot because the temperature is too low. But you made me wonder why they include it at all. It could be that they add it at the beginning in which case they must be frying some ingredient(s) first and lots of it if eye witness accounts of the amount of oil used are to be believed.

Otherwise, because it sits on top of the veg/water mix, its only effect can be to reduce evaporation from the pot during the four hours of simmering so that they don't have to watch it so closely for topping up. Even after blending the emulsion formed is not at a high enough temperature to allow any frying. The added benefit of this of course is that you get that spiced red oil which can now be used to make the curries.

Anyway the short answer is that no, there is no frying going on once the water has been added.

[Yellow Fingers]

More thoughts on the curry base sauce.

If you read through the various posts, it seems to be the concensus that the oil spooned off the final curry is put back into the base sauce pot. Clearly, as mentioned elsewhere, this will have an effect over the course of a night's cooking.

When I spoon the oil off my curries I'm really careful not to pick up any of the curry too. Chefs don't have the luxury of time so they will be less careful and some of the curry must go back into the pot each time, perhaps one or two teaspoons?. But this could easily be copied if each time you make a curry you freeze a teaspoon of sauce and when you have say ten teaspoons from different curries add this to your normal base sauce and boil for another hour or two.

I know Pete posted that he obtained a base sauce which had that taste and was quite thick. I think perhaps he got a sample that had been on for some time and so had thickened and changed colour and flavour because of the added teaspoons of curry sauces.

I think this would account for peoples experience of their curries having that taste if they go in the late evening and sometimes not when they go earlier on. It's not just because the sauce has been simmering longer, it's because it has added richness from a night's worth of added curry sauces.

Also, again as mentioned elsewhere, be sure to let your base sauce rest for at least a day?before use. I think to emulate the curry house technique I would make the base sauce, rest it for a day, heat it back up and add the ten or so teaspoons of the saved curries (you'd have to guess how much in proportion to the quantity of base you have made, I could calculate it if anyone wants to try it), simmer for an hour and let it rest another day before final use.

Who knows it might just come down to technique after all! ( but I personally doubt it).

[ghanna]

hi,yellowfingers
some of the fried garlic,ginger,and onion will go back  into the curry gravy pot.
some of the sauce that been cooked will go back as well.
oil from the sauce will go back as well.
don't forget bits from the fenugreek leaves and the fresh coriander that they add at the end of cooking the sauce will go back as well.
bits from the fresh tomato and fresh peppers that they use will go back as well
some of the evaporated milk which they use in korma will go back as well
some of the almonds and other nuts will go back as well
it is very shameful and disgusting form them to do that specially when they are getting huge amount of money from us
thanks
ghanna

[merrybaker]

One of the reasons for the mystery could well be because the secret ingredient is quite unsavoury?

I find it interesting that ALL the chefs keep the same ingredient a secret.? I?d expect one chef to ?forget? to mention green pepper, one to ?forget??curry powder, one to ?forget? black cardamom, and so on.? But it?s as if they all took an oath not to mention the same ingredient.? Or it's something they know we would think is disgusting.?