Quote from: Panpot on December 04, 2009, 12:58 PM
Guys I had a TA from my local last week,it has an open kitchen and you can see clearly what the chef is doing though not all of the ingredients. As you would expect the use lots of short cuts like pre cooked rice that they stick in microwave to heat, pretty poor chicken ticka and precooked chicken held in what seems to be hot water as it comes out of the pan pure white. Anyway he puts in a little oil and what must be ghee then in goes the garlic/ginger paste, the tomato puree and whatever his spice mix is and he stirs it in with the back of the spoon. He then leaves it on what seems to be high heat for a few minutes. I feel it will surely burn but he seems relaxed with this approach the as he adds the meat followed by the base he begins the movement and stirring but in this case no flame though others times there can be it doesn't seem to matter too much. he produces acceptable TA though I would want freshly cooked ticka in a good BIR. PP

I've also seen chefs leave a pan with spices being fried on super high heat for what seems like an amazing long time. I feel sure I would burn my spices if I try the same thing. Makes no sense to me unless the water in the tomato puree is protecting the spices.

Quote from: chewytikka on April 13, 2013, 08:18 PM
I use Ajwain, and work with it as I would dried Methi leaf, I rub it between the palms to activate it.
Then add it to medium hot oil, just before I fry a fillet-o-fish Bengali style.

or as part of a fish marinade, also included in a Aloo Tikki mix or stuffing, Bengali Omelette,
Enhances Besan beautifully, so my Onion Bhaji's have a good smattering, with an equal amount of Masoor Dal.

Sanjay Thurma agrees with you about Ajwain going with besan (at 1:40 in video)

http://youtu.be/a2bJHDaswlk?rel=0&start=100&end=&autoplay=0

Don't worry V

Quote from: macferret on October 21, 2014, 06:15 PM
Sorry, but I don't have a magic bullet for this one. We do exactly as Little Chilie says. You can cook double or even treble portions to speed things up but I don't usually bother because it just leads to mistakes.  I spent weeks trying to create bulk recipes but failed completely - even simple sauces like a korma just didn't come out right.

If anyone has some tips of their own I'm all ears. I have always said that if you could crack this, the Tesco contract alone would be worth millions

Thanks mate, understood. I bet supermarkets could quite easily commission a factory to cook BIR recipe meals at scale but the things which stop them doing so are simple economics (it takes a long time and the recipes are complex) and shelf life considerations. Supermarket ready meals need to be acidic to have a 2 week shelf life (taking into account the several days in the supply chain before it even hits the shelf) so they make them with fruit based sauces with a low ph.

Quote from: chewytikka on October 22, 2014, 02:12 AM

This Kiwi school chef gives a good bulk example using a bought in spice mix. (The kids love it!)

http://youtu.be/uGvai2N5J60

Interesting. The use of a premade (and prefried) spice mix makes sense in this setting as it makes the process easy, but I'm sure he could also buy individual spices in bulk and fry them up in that brat pan much cheaper.  I reckon one of those ready-to-go spice mixes with a thick base from this site, like JB base and you could churn out BIR at scale quite cheaply and quicker than standing over a pan cooking individual portions.

Quote from: Gav Iscon on October 22, 2014, 12:00 AM
On the main portal page once logged in, just search for bulk and you'll come across them.

Thanks. I found this example and a couple of similar ones:
https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php/topic,12388.msg100324.html#msg100324
The surprising method is to add the spices to base gravy and tomatoes and cook that until it becomes a spice paste, this being done in a large industrial sized pan. So the answer starts to become clearer for me, you can only really cook lots of portions at once by going up in size to a mega-pan.

This has been a useful thread for me. Thank you for all contributions as my thoughts are now clearer. I think little chilie's proposed method appears the most effective for bulk cooking at home.

Thanks fried, looks awesome!
Forgive me if I missed it but he didn't actually say how he cooked them did he?

Thanks guys, more or less what I thought. But what bugs me is the guys cooking for catering jobs must be using a scaleable bulk method. Maybe macferret would comment?

Has anyone got good experience with cooking in bulk, maybe 10 portions at once? How do you approach this?  I guess frying 10x spices is tough to get them cooked without burning some and all that tomato pur

Aw yeah, 240mils. Never was the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree when it came to math.  But from 240ml of base how do you get to 450ml of finished sauce? Unless he was referring to the buffet portion size of 100ml per portion?