Hi 976bar,

Same thing happened to me. A few months ago I pre-cooked a couple of lamb leg steaks simmering very gently for about 1 hour. That was ok.

I did the same thing a few weeks ago and it was tough as old boots after spending over 6 quid on lamb.

I think it may take longer to cook. When I made the KD Beef Badami I left it in a casserole dish in a low oven (about 70 or 80 degrees) for about 3 hours. The beef was very tender after this time.

Hi JerryM,

To be honest I discovered this by chance. The guy called Curry Barking Mad (Mick) posted something interesting on the "other forum" which caught my attention.

He was lucky enough to get a Pakistani chef from a reputedly good TA into his curry shed for a full-on base, spice mix and curry session. The chef was called Taz.

The base recipe was quite simple - just onions, some green pepper, some tinned toms, fresh garlic, fresh ginger, turmeric powder, whole cumin seeds and whole corriander seeds. Nothing else, so quite a simple base. Taz's technique is to make the base quite oil-heavy and at the cooking stage he doesn't add any extra oil, just the oil in the base is sufficient to cook with.

His spice mix is similar to the BE one but with 8% more turmeric and 8% less corriander but otherwise remarkably similar.

I made the base and spice mix and followed the recipe with some scepticism as I thought the base was too simple. But like others who tried (including CBM himself) I was very pleasantly surprised by the results.

Anyway, I wondered if it would work with a more complex base and I still had quite a lot of SnS 2008 base in the freezer.

I knew I would need more oil as the Taz base has 100% more oil than the SnS one but by using the 3 tablespoons of oil I cooked the onions in I reckon it balanced out the oil to match the Taz method.

The results of cooking 2 curries using the SnS 2008 base but with the Taz mix-it-all-up and reduce technique have produced my best curries to date.

I'm not saying this is the way to go for everybody and every curry as I think Taz has a unique approach but it does work and works well.

Another thing I have learned: In the past I was wary of too much turmeric and of cumin dominating the taste. The Taz base did taste quite strong with cumin and both his base and spice mix contain a fair proportion of turmeric, more than I would normally expect to use but the taste was spot on.

I still need to decide which produces the best results for me i.e. the Taz approach with SnS base or with the Taz base - they are both good, very good in fact.

This Taz thing is a bit of a distraction as I was going to try the CA base and spice mix but I will try that one next as I'm running out of base now.

I've often wondered about the exact cooking sequence for these BIR imitations with some recipes saying cook the garlic first and others saying onion/pepper first then garlic etc. Like others on this forum every curry is a bit of an experiment - otherwise no progress would be made.

I've now made the following changes to my cooking technique:-

If using Onions/Peppers cook them nice and slow in a separate fry pan.

Next I dump this lot into my carbon steel wok.

Then I add about 200 ml base, salt, spice mix, garlic, ginger, chili and tom paste and methi all at once.

I start heating on medium constantly stirring and reducing the base until the oil shows through and most of the water has gone from the base.

Next (cooking for 2 here) I add another 300 ml of base and raw chicken (if using) and simmer away for 10 to 12 minutes reducing the sauce a little more and doing the final seasoning.

I find that the reduction of the base in stage one with the constant stirring and scraping back in of the dried out base creates some of that smokey taste we are looking for.

Also, this method seems quite foolproof and it is hard to burn anything using this technique.

My curries have definitely improved using this method and are slightly easier to make.

My guess is the corriander stems - they retain more flavour than the leaves after sitting in a hot sauce.

Luckily neither me nor the wife minds the smell of boiling onions/garlic/ginger.

Good job really although I wonder if my neighbours appreciate the smells!

I don't recall ever having egg in a jalfrezi either!

I've noticed myself after slogging away inhaling all those onion, garlic and spice smells during cooking that your taste and smell become totally overwhelmed.

This is definitely a problem with cooking and then immediately eating your home-cooked curries.

Yes it does sound like a trip to the doctor might be advised.

Apart from the ring of fire I haven't heard of many other curry related side effects.
In fact most of the stuff in curries apart from loads of salt and oil are pretty good for you!

My curries don't seem to do that to me - thank god!

I can recall from ages ago when I used to eat much hotter food sitting on the loo the next day feeling really dicky and getting into a cold sweat - it that the sort of thing you mean by the "KNOCK" or is it something else?

Here it is:

https://curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=3295.msg34667#msg34667

I haven't tried it yet.