Topic: It's curry gold - Main Dish "skimmings"

[JerryM]

square peg and only round holes in sight!

this is something i've pondered off and on and never resolved.

Secret Santa has mentioned it several times in the past.

the last few posts (pg 5) in the jb post on, "spiced oil in base" prompted the post.

this is what i know:

1) oil is needed to make a top notch BIR.
2) i don't agree that an excess is needed (defined as more than a hint of oil on the surface or small amount of pooling). at my local TA if an "excess" occurs which don't seem that often (observing from the counter) the chef skims off the excess into a tin (from the frying pan)
3) the colour of this oil is red and can be "hot" spiced down to chilli (observed from purchased dishes)
4) the colour of the curry gravy oil is yellow
5) from direct experience i know that recycling curry gravy oil through a number of batch of base (say 3 off) improves the intensity of the oil. Nb i no longer do this as i use marg which limits the shelf life.
6) using more oil at frying stage significantly eases the cooking process ie if time was not an issue use more oil and skim it off

so the question is where is this skimmed oil used. given jb's recent find that even pre cook chicken liquid is saved - i am pretty sure this "curry gold" is not binned.

i can't put hand on heart and say it does not go back into the base in some BIR - but at my local TA i am pretty sure it can't as the yellow and red oil don't mix.

the only place i can find is the bunjarra.

all thoughts very welcome to hopefully put this one "niggle" to bed.

[Peripatetic Phil]

Just one comment :

2) I don't agree that an excess is needed (defined as more than a hint of oil on the surface or small amount of pooling). at my local TA if an "excess" occurs which don't seem that often (observing from the counter) the chef skims off the excess into a tin (from the frying pan)

In my experience, it is almost a case of "the more oil the better", in the sense that the flavour improves as the excess of oil increases up to some (unknown) limit, but as a matter of course I remove (and recycle) most of that "excess oil" before serving, although on the last occasion I left all the oil in and the dish was none the worse for that (but we were serving ourselves direct from the pressure cooker, so it was easy to pour back excess oil from the ladle when helping oneself).  I am reasonably confident that most of my failures [1] have resulted from using insufficient oil.  When I re-spice a take-away curry that has failed to meet my expectations, I invariably add extra oil during the re-spicing process which is then skimmed off again before serving.

[1] The other failures have occurred when the final curry is too thick.

** Phil.

[jb]

square peg and only round holes in sight!

this is something i've pondered off and on and never resolved.

Secret Santa has mentioned it several times in the past.

the last few posts (pg 5) in the jb post on, "spiced oil in base" prompted the post.

this is what i know:

1) oil is needed to make a top notch BIR.
2) i don't agree that an excess is needed (defined as more than a hint of oil on the surface or small amount of pooling). at my local TA if an "excess" occurs which don't seem that often (observing from the counter) the chef skims off the excess into a tin (from the frying pan)
3) the colour of this oil is red and can be "hot" spiced down to chilli (observed from purchased dishes)
4) the colour of the curry gravy oil is yellow
5) from direct experience i know that recycling curry gravy oil through a number of batch of base (say 3 off) improves the intensity of the oil. Nb i no longer do this as i use marg which limits the shelf life.
6) using more oil at frying stage significantly eases the cooking process ie if time was not an issue use more oil and skim it off

so the question is where is this skimmed oil used. given jb's recent find that even pre cook chicken liquid is saved - i am pretty sure this "curry gold" is not binned.

i can't put hand on heart and say it does not go back into the base in some BIR - but at my local TA i am pretty sure it can't as the yellow and red oil don't mix.

the only place i can find is the bunjarra.

all thoughts very welcome to hopefully put this one "niggle" to bed.

 

Jerry M on my lesson there was a big pot which contained pre-cooked chicken.The chef got the chicken out with a slotted spoon,and then said the liquid that remained was indeed poured into the base sauce pan.It was quite runny but there was loads of orange/red oil floating on the top.When he had exhausted one base sauce he produced another,this was indeed yellow but when he started to simmer it the orange oil started to seep through.

[JerryM]

i tried skimming off the oil on a recent dish (Cha006 Bombay dish 3).

it's not going to work for me and i've abandoned the idea.

i would have to add quite a lot more oil to make the skimming time economic - took too long and too fiddly.