Topic: Mustard oil

[Peripatetic Phil]

I am just pre-cooking my next batch of chicken using 50% mustard oil (the other 50% being rice bran oil).

OK, ate the resulting curry last night and it was Not Bad (tm).  This was basically a KD1 Chicken Madras with 1/5 of the oil replaced by surplus lime pickle oil (i.e., the oil which preserves lime pickle, and of which there can sometimes be an excess in any given jar), and with my usual modifications of twice the volume of gravy and twice the quantity of spices per unit volume of gravy, no added garam masala or fresh tomato (in future I shall refer to this as KD1/PT, to save keep repeating my modifications !).  The mustard oil flavour clearly came through in the final dish, but it was not overly intrusive as I had feared, so I have now pre-cooked the remains of the chicken in the same sauce as I used for the first batch.

On balance, is pre-cooking in mustard oil beneficial ? No.  It is useful as a variation, and there may be some dishes (I am thinking in particular of dhansak) where that particular flavour might be complimentary, but for everyday BIR preparation I can see no benefit.

** Phil.

[Secret Santa]

This was basically a KD1 Chicken Madras with 1/5 of the oil replaced by surplus lime pickle oil (i.e., the oil which preserves lime pickle, and of which there can sometimes be an excess in any given jar)...

Seriously good idea to use the lime-pickle oil Phil, seriously bad idea to use it in a madras - ya heathen!   ;D

If you're going to use the excess oil use it where it has most benefit, i.e. in chicken achari, which usually includes a good dollop of lime pickle anyway.

[Peripatetic Phil]

Seriously good idea to use the lime-pickle oil Phil, seriously bad idea to use it in a madras - ya heathen!   ;D

Well, I don't know if what I make is really a "Madras" anyway.  It starts life as KD1 "Chicken Curry", replaces the ground chillies with Bassar Curry Masala, increases the quantities thereof in line with her recommendations for Madras, and then has the other KD1/PT modifications already documented.  I could just describe it as a "Chicken Curry", but that wouldn't accurately convey where it lies on the heat axis, so I use the term "Madras" more as a heat indicator than as an accurate description of the curry.

I have tried restaurant Chicken Achari, but it was rather too obvious that it was just a Chicken Madras with added pickles ("achar" = "pickle"), so that was really a one-off experiment.

** Phil.