To skim or not to skim? That IS the question!

[jb]

If you look at the chef cooking a base in The Little India Restaurant(the one where CBM filmed and kindly posted the footage)  you can see he has a technique of swirling the froth/scum around leaving it in the base.Clearly he does not see the need to skim,if it's good enough for him then I'm not going to argue!!

[fried]

I've always skimmed, just because CT does it in his video and it's just become automatic. I do worry that I'm losing some valuable oil with the scum though.

[JerryM]

Sometimes a bit confusing to follow Jerry
Is that 300ml of scum or oil from a 4L base?

i try to post factually (what i do not what i think) to avoid aggravation which we all don't need or want. the english obviously suffers as a result. must try better but always happy to clarify when needed.

the 300ml is foamy scum.

clearly each to their own on this one as there very different views. i've tried both and can relate totally to chewytikka's words. i always skim full stop - i don't need to ponder the idea as i know the difference.

some bases produce more scum than others. i think the scum comes from the veg and some veg seem to give off more scum than others.

i know that some BIR don't skim.

i know that the technique for removing the scum is not easy to carry out - it's not easy to keep the oil, base and scum separate and there is only a limited window (~20 mins) before it becomes impossible to keep the scum and oil separate. by stirring the base now and then during this say 20 min window the oil can be kept dissolved in the base leaving frequent opportunities when the scum has resurfaced to remove it with a chef spoon.

as with a lot in BIR this is real fine tuning which i see essential to produce best. if other things in the BIR mix are not right then you won't see any difference between stirring it in or skimming it off.

essentially depends on your own personal outlook.

[RubyDoo]

Thank you for taking the time to reply.. Will try both me thinks.

[JerryM]

took a pic while i was making base - 100ml was the amount skimmed off

[Stephen Lindsay]

proud to keep the scum

[chewytikka]

Hi Jerry
Cooked this pan of Garabi this morning.
Well actually, a full bodied medium curry for someones party tonight.

Took the pics to show what I mean, when I say scum.
Very little removed on the finished Garabi, about a Chef's spoon.



Still a few bits here and there, floating on the oil, but near enough.
cheers Chewy

[JerryM]

chewytikka,

brill photo's they show it very clearly.

when i 1st started on curry i did not know what was meant by "scum" and it took an unnecessary amount of time for me to get confident on what it was. these photo's will help anyone who was still insure on what it is and of course has an interest in its removal. all the posts above putting the case for or not sufficiently well.

the only slight remaining interest i have is why some base produce more than others. the ifindforu for example produces 300 ml against what was 100ml for mytake. i think the rajver produces ~300ml too. i am pretty sure it must be down to type of vegetable (i use the same proportion of bulk veg in all base).

i never peel carrot and feel this does not make much difference to the amount of scum. in this particular base for the 1st time i did not peel the garlic and expected an increase which did not occur.

in reality the amount i suppose does not matter for either viewpoint. my interest really being aimed at the taste of oil and is a long term interest just to understand more about the general subject of curry.

[RubyDoo]

chewytikka,


i did not peel the garlic and expected an increase which did not occur.

MMmmm  - I assume you sieve the base then?  get rid of all that garlic skin?

[JerryM]

RubyDoo,

i always use stick blender on the base. i guess the skin must have stayed in the base or been a very small part of the scum. i used 40g of garlic so not a great amount of skin. i could not detect any change in taste to the base eitherway. it was something i'd thought to do for a while just out of ease. i intend to adopt as standard. the only slight downside is that you have to be sure the garlic is fresh and no defeats "brown" spots.