Topic: Anyone tried Julian's base yet?

[Aussie Mick]

"A very nice curry" sounds good to me though..

CA and Cwewy's recipes also give a very nice curry.

I'm gonna get meself a pressure cooker tomorrow and give this one a go. 

I wish we had an Argos here in Perth though. Cheapest I have found here is $175 for a 9.5 litre pan.

[George]

"A very nice curry" sounds good to me though..
CA and Cwewy's recipes also give a very nice curry.
I'm gonna get meself a pressure cooker tomorrow and give this one a go. 
I wish we had an Argos here in Perth though. Cheapest I have found here is $175 for a 9.5 litre pan.

Here's my expectation or prediction, for what it's worth - my hunch is that, in six months time, pressure cookers will have been forgotten or put back in the cupboard in terms of cooking base sauces or anything to do with BIR food. C2G may have found a time-is-money type saving by using a pressure cooker in business but I doubt very much if equal or better results can't be obtained by cooking at normal pressure for normal times like almost every other BIR does. If pressure cookers are essential in this context why haven't they been seen much before in BIRs?

[DalPuri]

"A very nice curry" sounds good to me though..
CA and Cwewy's recipes also give a very nice curry.
I'm gonna get meself a pressure cooker tomorrow and give this one a go. 
I wish we had an Argos here in Perth though. Cheapest I have found here is $175 for a 9.5 litre pan.

Here's my expectation or prediction, for what it's worth - my hunch is that, in six months time, pressure cookers will have been forgotten or put back in the cupboard in terms of cooking base sauces or anything to do with BIR food. C2G may have found a time-is-money type saving by using a pressure cooker in business but I doubt very much if equal or better results can't be obtained by cooking at normal pressure for normal times like almost every other BIR does. If pressure cookers are essential in this context why haven't they been seen much before in BIRs?

Good point George.
It's not like they don't know about them. Almost every Indian household uses a pressure cooker. 

[Whandsy]

"A very nice curry" sounds good to me though..
CA and Cwewy's recipes also give a very nice curry.
I'm gonna get meself a pressure cooker tomorrow and give this one a go. 
I wish we had an Argos here in Perth though. Cheapest I have found here is $175 for a 9.5 litre pan.

Here's my expectation or prediction, for what it's worth - my hunch is that, in six months time, pressure cookers will have been forgotten or put back in the cupboard in terms of cooking base sauces or anything to do with BIR food. C2G may have found a time-is-money type saving by using a pressure cooker in business but I doubt very much if equal or better results can't be obtained by cooking at normal pressure for normal times like almost every other BIR does. If pressure cookers are essential in this context why haven't they been seen much before in BIRs?

I dont disagree with you there george, and agree that the pressure cooker method isn't going to give you better results than the conventional method. If my days were to be spent working 8 hrs in a takeaway then conventional cooking would apply, however, trying to juggle an already busy working day along with bringing up a family, then saving a couple of hours making a base sauce works for me

W

[Aussie Mick]

Same here Whandsy.

I'm looking at it as a time saving devise. As Dal Puri has said, I don't know any Indian household that doesn't own a pressure cooker. It's an essential item. Lentils can be cooked in minutes rather than hours. The gas savings alone are worth it, let alone time savings.

[George]

saving a couple of hours making a base sauce works for me

Despite my reservations, after reading some of the positive comments about results from using a pressure cooker, I must try it. I'm primarily interested in flavour, rather than time-saving.

[ELW]

The smell just changes to an almost sour
Perhaps vinegar is not a good analogy, but I can't think of a better one
It is a recognisable Takeaway smell

Possibly Haldi, I have heard of onion souring soups through a long cooking process, never experienced it though either in soup or base gravy

[emin-j]

I don't know whether removing the fibrous stuff from the base is a good idea,there could be flavour in it and you would be removing it  you wouldn't notice this stuff in a final curry and I cant imagine many BIR's sieving their giant pots of base,just my opinion 

[rockyholland]

saving a couple of hours making a base sauce works for me

Despite my reservations, after reading some of the positive comments about results from using a pressure cooker, I must try it. I'm primarily interested in flavour, rather than time-saving.

George

Just to give you my opinion after having used a pressure cooker for a couple of months.

I cannot detect any flavour / taste difference when cooking a base gravy, purely a time saver.

Cubed meat, lamb, beef (I don't bother with chicken because it takes so little time anyway) cooks to perfection in 15 minutes but no improvement or difference flavourwise from normal pot cooking.

I can vouch for using a high pressure cooker (15 or 16 psi insted of 7 psi for low pressure) but again this is a time saving issue not a flavour one. I did use a low pressure cooker years ago but cooking times were not drastically reduced compared to HP.

Time can obviously be translated into money, 15 minutes instead of 1.5 to 2 hours saves a lot of gas but in the scheme of things unless you cook all or most of your food in a P cooker not an important point.

However using the P cooker does allow me to cook up a meat curry 'on the spur', assuming I have a stock of frozen gravy etc. It only takes 30/45 minutes from scratch to table, you couldn't do this by pot cooking meat.

Anyway I hope this helps with your decision to buy or not.

Regards

[Micky Tikka]

My mate Heston says
The foundation of so many soups, sauces is a good stock and a Pressure cooker really maximizes the amount of flavour you can extract from a stocks ingredients  Because its a sealed, pressurezied container, it holds on to lots of the flavour that normally evaporates when you make stock in a stockpot.  It heats liquid to a temperature above 100c generating lots of reactions that produce new complex flavours, a pressure cooker is the stock makers secret weapone.  It might seem a big outlay for a piece of equipment to make stocks, but once you've tasted the results, you will see it is worth it.

Signed Heston.