Secret Santa - I could have predicted that before you almost wasted your time. This thread is about lamb bhuna. Your result sounds similar to the lacklustre results I attained using chicken with various other sauces in the same range.

Quote from: Onions on October 28, 2020, 07:10 PM
I followed the-kind of generic, I admit-bhuna in my head (probably implanted there by Mick Crawford from my earliest days on the forum!). So used the Aldi mix in place of our own spice mix, adding onions, peppers, garlic paste, other powders, chopped coriander etc, at the usual points.

I tried adding the same extra ingredients in a further use of the Aldi sauce some time ago. To my surprise, the end result was not as good, reducing the taste down to perhaps 25% as good as a BIR bhuna buffet. Go figure! I don't know the reason. If something works by experimenting, then great. But this didn't. So I suggest sticking to the method on the jar (frying the lamb first), except for longer, slower cooking, and adding a bit of water to the ground spices, to form a paste.

Quote from: Onions on October 28, 2020, 07:10 PM
I used pre-cooked lamb-did you too?

No, I should have stressed to use raw lamb because I'm fairly sure it's the lamb juices which provide much of the flavour in this dish.

Whereas with chicken I often think the juices from raw poultry detract from a 'curry' type flavour. I mean the use of chicken in general. I've never used it with the Aldi bhuna sauce but I did with other sauces in the range and maybe that explains why they tasted so disapppointing.

For total cooking time, maybe 30 or 45 mins, not least to make sure the raw lamb is cooked through.

Quote from: Onions on October 28, 2020, 06:01 PM
Gonna give it a whirl tonight. Dead right though: spices, then meat is the order of the day...

Be sure to use lamb if you seek my result of approx 75% as good as a BIR buffet bhuna. Mix spices with some water to form a paste and fry carefully on low heat. Then add a small amount of the sauce at a time, remaining on low heat. The overall cooking time should be dragged out for as long as possible to maximise the flavour of the end result.

Quote from: Peripatetic Phil on October 28, 2020, 10:07 AM
For George, Santa and anyone else interested

Quote from: Peripatetic Phil on August 01, 2020, 12:13 PM
If there is general consensus that the thread should be split into "Balti" and "Attar", I would be more than happy to do that.

I don't think it's necessary but, if you did, we'd end up with only 2 or 3 posts about Balti and something like 3 pages on Attar. A better idea might be to change the thread title to "Attar". The mickdabass comment was wholly inappropriate because this thread was never really about Balti.

Quote from: mickdabass on August 01, 2020, 10:35 AM
youve derailed this thread. The subject is Balti not Biryani

By commenting like that, I suggest you derailed the forum when you joined.

You can hop off as far as I'm concerned.

Quote from: Peripatetic Phil on July 24, 2020, 12:22 PM
G@d knows how much he adds in total !

You could perhaps ask him, as a question related to the video.  I take the visual information as the most useful indicator in youtube recipes. Text information or verbal descriptions often don't tally. So the text guidance, in your earlier quote, to use a few drops, might actually be a few splashes in practice - vastly more. As you say, who knows? That's why I want to find out for myself. Another example - cooks often say to add a pinch of salt but I see them adding more like 5ml or even 10ml.

Phil - thank you for quoting that web page. I'm probably trying to run before I can walk. I'm now going to keep the expensive Meera Attar sealed until I get a feel for the impact of the related but much lower cost Keera and Rose waters. I like Biryani so will make that my practice vehicle. I wonder how many BIRs use Keera and Rose water in their Biryani.

Here's the youtube video I mentioned. He adds two lots of big squirts of Kewra and Rose waters. I tried to estimate the quantity when I typed up the recipe. It's quite a large quantity of Biryani but a lot more than a few drops:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XGKjloyL48

SS - korma (BIR style) was of interest to me until ten years ago but no longer. I just had a hunch that Meetha Attar might give a lift to CTM but I was wrong. The reason I added 1.25ml was that an Indian chef on youtube added 20ml kewra water and 20ml rose water to a biriani. The flavour of Meetha Attar was hard to notice in the CTM so I'm not sure it was too much. I predict that Meetha Attar will be almost impossible to discern if only adding 1 drop per kilo of onions.