Hi 976bar,

Do you actually like BIR food? The last madras I had from a TA must have had at least 4 tablespoons of oil. This type of food is supposed to be fairly oily. If you had to thin down your madras it sounds like maybe your base sauce was too thick.

I have been trying to cook curries like my favourite TAs and restaurants for over 20 years. I tried and long ago gave up on any genuine indian recipe books in trying to achieve this goal. I do cook a few genuine dhal recipes and a keema peas dish but I still prefer the BIR curries.

Most of the BIR "secret" to my mind is with the base technique. I have a long way to go and many other base recipes to try but with the help of this forum I can cook something much closer to BIR than I have ever achieved before in my life - close but still not close enough.

Hi,

BIR is British Indian Restaurant. Used to describe the type of food you get from BIRs or takeaways in the UK. Not to be confused with genuine Indian recipes.

Hi pg89,

You said in your first post you would be happy with a madras. Why not forget the sugar idea for now and concentrate on a madras recipe, either from this site or the other one you got your melting base 3 recipe from.

There are several "proven" base recipes on this forum together with final madras recipes. I can knock out curries better than my local takeaway now but my local TA is crap to be honest and I can't beat a good TA or restaurant.

PS: You couldn't get the recipe for the real base you obtained, could you?

I used the SnS 2008 base to make a korma - I didn't notice the tomato flavour but maybe that's just my taste buds.

I'm keen to try other bases though and will be getting my new freezer soon for the garage.

What base from this site would other members recommend for a Korma? I don't like Kormas much but the wife does.

They say an adult can eat about 6 grams of salt a day - I try to keep my finished curries down to 2 grams per portion, and certainly less than 3 grams. This sits ok with me as the meal is intended to be the biggest meal of the day.

My wife bought a pre-made corned beef hash recently and I was shocked to see it contained 4.75 grams of salt for a single person portion!

Hi pg89,

I have seen the recipe for the Melting Base 3 gravy and it looks reasonable from the ingredients and your pictures of it look ok.

Why not try cooking a simpler curry - the Bhuna and Madras recipes look ok on RCR - why not try one of these instead? I agree with others on frying sugar - Not sure what this is trying to achieve other than a sticky burnt mess in your pan!

Hi Again,

Saffron base should be good for these at least:-

Curry King's bhuna:-

https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=1914.0

SnS Korma:-

https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=2408.0

Admin Jalfrezi:-

https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=2664.0

Cheers,

Paul

Hi - glad you enjoyed the recipes. Funny enough I had just bought the Kris Dillon book myself about 2 weeks before I stumbled upon this forum. Now after cooking about 35 curries based on recipes from this forum I now look at the KD recipes and can imagine what they might taste like. The KD recipes don't look right to me at all with a lot of flavour coming from garam masalla. I'm sure many of us on this forum have destroyed a curry by using too much GM in the past, usually following a poor recipe.

Regarding the oil, I did some calculations and if you made a single portion chicken madras using the SNS 2008 base and the madras recipe to match you would consume:

20 ml oil from the 250 ml base and 30 ml oil from the final stage cooking assuming 2 and not 3 tablespoons of oil. This makes 50 ml of oil which will weigh in at 46 grams. In calory terms this will add up to approx 396 calories per portion just from the oil. This doesn't worry me a bit as I normally eat a chicken curry with chappatis or boiled rice which don't add any more fat and I don't generally follow it up with a desert.

You could probably remove about a tablespoon of oil after cooking if you allow the dish to settle for a while without ruining the taste and then you would drop the oil content by 13.8 grams or nearly 120 calories.

I think if you reduce the cooking amount of oil you may get into difficulties when you add the spice mix as the mixture may then become too dry to work with in the pan.

Fat can be bad for 2 reasons - 1) Effects on cardiovascular system 2) sheer amount of calories.

1 is down to what oil you consume and 2 is down to your whole eating regime.

After doing some research into edible oils I now do the following:

I use rice bran oil for making my bases - It is said to be as healthy as quality olive oil. Secondly I do the final stage curries using 100% organic coconut oil - this stuff costs 26 pence a tablespoon but it works for me and the wife.

Sorry for the long post - if you are interested google for the health benefits of virgin coconut oil - it has unique properties despite the 93% saturated fat content.

I made the mistake a month or two back of adding too much base for the final stage quantities of spices/garlic/ginger. The result was a very bland curry and not BIR at all. Having said that my family still seemed to enjoy it but they are more used to supermarket jar curries.

When you start to introduce the base to your final stage fry-up are you reducing the base i.e. boiling off the water from the base? It does make a big difference to the flavour. For the first ladle of base you want to drive off all the water but as you add more base later you will drive off less of the water until your sauce looks (and tastes hopefully) as you would expect.

You could also try adding more spice mix and chilli than the recipe suggests. And check the usual things like the quality (freshness) of your spices.

Thanks for sharing the recipe - just a question, what do you do with the star anise?

Paul.