Topic: Video demonstrating cooking of Balti in Birmingham

[JerryM]

i gave this "setting fire to the onion" a bit more of a go last week. it was a bit disjointed for me as my main focus was on comparing Dipuraja's "all in" cooking method with the hot method.

gut feeling is there is no mileage to be had in further investigating onion flaming. we could not tell any difference in the final dish - onions flamed c/w onions fried hot but no flame.

i did find that if u coat the onion with too much water "a splash" the pan won't flame for quite some time (i guess the fire service could have told me that). this suggests to me that salt is used by the BIR in the video. the salting produces a slight coating of liquid on the surface of the onion - which does flame very easily.

why they would do it is quite baffling.