Today I'm going to be making a curry base gravy or sauce,
which is a method used by many British Indian restaurants to speed up the process of making
curry. This curry base gravy can be used in many different types of curry
and it gives a lovely luscious thick sauce with an instant hit of flavour.
And be sure to watch to the end where we're going to have a taste test to compare a curry that uses
the base gravy method and one that doesn't use the base gravy method, wonder which one will win?
Hi I'm Nicky, welcome back to our kitchen where we show you how to make delicious family-friendly
recipes. If you've been watching our channel for a while you'll know that we love to cook curries and
every time I post a curry recipe we get lots of comments asking us to try the curry base gravy
method so that's what I'm going to be making today, and then once I've made that curry base
I'm going to show you how to use it to make a chicken jalfrezi, so let's get cooking. We
start by heating 120 mil or half a cup of oil in a large casserole pan over a medium heat.
Now you can use ghee if you prefer but I find that's a little bit more expensive.
Now we're going to add a kilogram of onions which is about six medium onions
which have been roughly chopped and we're going to cook them, stirring occasionally,
for about 20 minutes until they start to go light brown and to caramelize slightly.
The quantities might seem a little large but we're going to make quite a few portions
of this curry base so that we can freeze it and that's the idea behind this sauce.
Once the onions are nice and soft and have started to caramelise slightly
we're going to add eight cloves of minced garlic and two tablespoons of minced ginger.
We're also going to add in some spices, I've got two tablespoons each of garam masala and ground
coriander, a tablespoon each of ground cumin and paprika, one and a half teaspoons of turmeric,
a teaspoon of cinnamon, two teaspoons of salt, one teaspoon of black pepper and a quarter of
a teaspoon of ground cardamom. Add the spices to the pan along with two tablespoons of tomato puree.
Stir to coat the onions and cook for a further five minutes stirring often.
Now add in a roughly chopped red and green pepper, a roughly chopped carrot
and a 400 gram or 14 ounce tin of chopped tomatoes.
Now we're going to add in two liters, which is a little over eight cups, of chicken stock
or you can use vegetable stock if you prefer. A lot of recipes call for
adding water in at this stage but I can't resist adding that little bit extra flavor.
Stir everything together and then bring to the boil and simmer gently for an hour.
So it's a bit of a badly kept secret that many British Indian restaurants
have a big vat of this curry base sauce on the go at all times so they can really speed up the
process of making the curries and get those high numbers of curries out the door fast.
After an hour turn off the heat and allow to cool.
Once it's cooled slightly we're going to carefully blitz it to a smooth liquid using a stick blender.
This recipe makes about 12 cups which is about 24 individual servings of the curry base and you
can freeze that in portions to make a really quick curry later. So let's give that a little
taste. It tastes like a really lovely Indian spiced soup, in fact, it'd made quite a nice soup just by
itself. So let's put it to the test, I've made some modifications to my chicken jalfrezi recipe
and we're going to use the curry base gravy to make it, so let's get cooking again. So heat
a tablespoon of oil and two tablespoons of unsalted butter in a large frying pan.
Add in three chicken breasts that have been chopped into bite-sized chunks, that's about
500 grams or 1.1 pounds of chicken. We're also going to add in a sliced onion cook on a medium
to high heat for four to five minutes until the chicken's sealed. I've gone with not marinading
the chicken for this recipe as I do in my regular jalfrezi recipe because I want this curry to be
really quick, that's the idea behind the curry base gravy, and if you wanted to make it even
quicker it's a really good idea to meal prep some chicken tikka and cook it and freeze it in advance.
And that way you can probably get this curry on the table in about 10 minutes. Once the chicken
sealed add in a sliced red and green chili along with a sliced red and green bell pepper.
Then cook for about two to three minutes stirring often.
Now it's time to add in some spices that are specific to a chicken jalfrezi.
I'm using fewer spices than normal because, of course, we've got some spices in the curry base,
so here I've got a teaspoon each of garam masala,
ground coriander, cumin and turmeric and three quarters of a teaspoon of salt.
We're also adding in two tablespoons of tomato puree.
Stir together to coat the chicken and the peppers and cook for a further two minutes.
Now we're going to add in about 480 ml or two cups of the curry base.
If you've frozen your curry base into portions make sure you thoroughly defrost
it before adding it to the pan. So stir it all together and then bring to the boil and
simmer for five minutes until the sauce is thickened and the chicken is cooked through.
Turn off the heat and stir in a small bunch of fresh coriander and then you're ready to serve.
Okay so that took about 14 minutes to make which is half the time my regular chicken
jalfrezi takes to make and I've actually got a portion of my regular chicken jalfrezi here
so let's do a taste test. So I'm trying the curry base gravy one first.
mmm mmm it's delicious.
That's really good. Okay let's try the original version.
mmm mmm it's so good too.
Okay here are my thoughts, this one, the curry based gravy one, definitely ticks the box in terms
of being a real time-saver, so that only took 14 minutes to cook compared to this one which takes
about 30 minutes to cook. Now you can see the curry base gravy one is quite a lot lighter than the
original jalfrezi and I found that the chicken in the original Jalfrezi, the chicken itself
has got a bit more flavor to it, because I usually marinate the chicken there so I think if you were
to marinate the chicken advance for this curry then that chicken would taste just as good as well.
But for the sauce, it's the sauce that's all-important and actually I prefer the
sauce with the curry base gravy method, it's really rich and it's velvety and it's smooth.
This one tastes spicy and delicious as well but it's just a little bit sharper, whereas
this has got a really nice smooth richness to it. So overall I think this one's actually the winner.
So if you like a curry and you've got some time for meal-prep then this curry base gravy is a
great thing to have in the freezer along with some cooked marinated chicken, that way you can
get a curry on the table in 10 to 15 minutes, it's definitely something Chris and I will be
experimenting more with. So tell me in the comments below, will you be making a curry base gravy?
and if so what's your favorite curry that you'll use it for? See you next time.