Topic: Bobby Bhunas Beefy Base (Illustrated)

[Bobby Bhuna]

I have in the past, made iterations of the following bases:

• KD Base
• Admins new Base
• Ifindforu Base
• Saffron Base
• Darths 100 percent Madras base

I decided on Tuesday that I knew what I liked and I knew what I didn't like, and set out to make the base to defeat all bases. So here goes.

Stage 1 Ingredients

• 100ml sunflower oil
• Around 1kg onions very coarsely chopped
• 1 green pepper coarsely chopped
• 1 fairly chunky looking bulb of garlic peeled and roughly chopped
• A piece of ginger round about as big as the garlic roughly chopped
• 2 star anise
• 2 tbsp. coriander stems chopped
• 5 cracked green cardomom pods
• 1 tsp. whole cumin seed
• 1 tsp. tamarind paste
• 2 tsp. salt
• 2 tbsp. Knor chicken Bouillon from the small brown bottle

Stage 2 Ingredients

• 1 tin chopped tomatoes
• 2 dsrtsp. turmeric
• 2 dsrtsp. paprika
• 2 dsrtsp. ground coriander
• 1 dsrtsp. ground cumin
• 2 dsrtsp. Rajah Mild Madras curry powder
• 1/2 dsrtsp. garlic powder

Method

Put stage 1 ingredients in a large pan and simmer for 40 minutes. Remove star anise. Add stage 2 ingredients and gently simmer for half an hour. Blend and very gently simmer again until oil starts to separate [removing scum ]

Images

Stage 1 ingredients in pan



Spices laid out on a plate



After a 40 minute hard simmering



The finished base



The resultant curry



Results

To give my base a quick run round the track, I knocked up an old favourite, the Rajver Madras, sans garlic. Out of 10 I'd give it a 3.

I don't recommend that you should try this recipe  ;D

[Jethro]

Are you saying the base is no good or the curry recipe? 

[Jeera]

Bobby, nice to see a failure posted once in a while :-)

Good effort with the experiment & photos.

[SnS]

So what ingredients do you think caused you yo give it a disappointing 3/10 Bobby? Which ones would you leave out or adjust next time? (I guess it wasn't the method).

Well done for trying though.
SnS  ;D

[Bobby Bhuna]

I'm certain it's the base, not the curry. The rajver Madras has always turns out a decent effort with every other base I've made.

I think primarily I would use far less spices. I'd also leave out the wierd fancy pants ingredients such as Tamarind paste, star anise etc. I think I'd do a spot of gentle frying before boiling perhaps but I'm not too sure.

I think more and more that a lightly spiced base gives me better results. As long as it has onion, some tomato, garlic and a light spicing of the common ones, it usually comes out fine for me. I'm pretty sure the green pepper doesn't do anything great for me either...

I made another attempt this weekend, which was fantastic! I used loads of oil, some really nice large onions from Sainsburys, fresh tomatos, garlic, ginger and some home ground Garam Masala and some Turmeric. For my Garam Masala I used 1 tsp cumin, 1 tsp Coriander, around 8 green cardomom, 1 black one, a piece of Casia bark, a few cloves and a small piece of Nutmeg. I gently heated around 3-400 ml oil and added the GM, a desert spoon of Turmeric, 4 large onions, 6 fresh Tomatos and cooked until soft. Then I added a litre of so of boiling water and simmer for a half hour then blended. It really is excellent and makes a great Bhuna.

[Cory Ander]

Hi Bobby,

Interesting post Bobby 

I'd make the following comments and hope that they are helpful:

• I generally use about 300ml of oil (compared to your 100ml) and about 1.5 litres of water/stock (compared to your how much?) for per 1kg of onions (I like lots of oil  )
• I skip the whole spices and just go for a simple powder mix (as the BIRs no doubt do)
• I'm not familiar with this "Knorr Chicken Bouillon" but, if it's anything like their "Liquid Seasoning", it's got a very "oriental" (i.e. soy) flavour and I'd treat it with utmost caution.  I'd anyway be cautious about putting 2tbsp of bouillon in this volume of base (I use 1 tsp of powdered bouillon only, if any)
  
• I use far less salt (it can always add it later)
• Yes, I'm not sure about the benefits of adding the tamarind either
• I'm always wary of adding tinned toms (Ive always got bitterness as a result, but others haven't it seems).  I prefer to use fresh toms and tomato paste instead....bit not much of either
• Yes, I think you probably have far too much spice in this volume of curry base.  I generally work on about 9 tsp (of curry powder, masala, spice mix) per 1kg of onions(compared to your 19 tsp...plus whole spices)
• I'd take it easy on the garlic powder too.  I've found it doesn't necessarily add the flavour I desire if I add too much of it
• I wouldn't worry about frying anything.  Just chuck it all in, boil it for an hour or two, and blend it! 

Hope these comments help!

PS:  Why do you call it a "beefy base"? 

[Bobby Bhuna]

Thanks very much CA, I'll bear your suggestions in mind for next time around and let you know how I get on.

PS:  Why do you call it a "beefy base"? 

Lol, because it's heavily 'beefed up' with spices etc. I was going for a very strong flavoured base - which I did get... It's just the flavour was crap

[Davy]

Hi all,
We need pioneers Bobby and every effort like this is step towards the greater good. I once had a curry in America that had base of caramelised onions! I managed to replicate it but the important point was that the onions had to be caramelised and used straight into the curry as a base and not added to a base recipe like you would ordinary onions. I tried adding them to a base and the flavour just gets lost. It takes ages for them to caramelise properly. That's is without cheating and adding sugar to speed up process. Took me over an hour of covered simmering and occasional stirring to get that lovely brown colour but it was worth it. Here's a thought that just struck me. If only I had reclaimed the oil first before blitzing ! looking at your posts Bobby it's seems your up here in Scotland?  ;D