I've run out of batch/pre-cooked BIR ingredients in my freezer so it was time for me to whip up some more. Since I'm going through the process I thought I'd share it here too.
'BIR' as the title says, is an acronym for British Indian Restaurant. I don't really know that much of the history of the food but I do know that it's descended from that which was cooked to the liking of British colonists of India during the British Raj (colonisation of India) and also that it's somewhat of a misnomer in the modern day, since the majority of curry houses in the UK are Bangladeshi-owned and run. Nevertheless, what Brits get when we 'go for a curry' on a Friday night has a taste that is known and loved across the islands with some iconic dishes such as Chicken Tikka Masala and Lamb Vindaloo, many of which have evolved away from their parent recipes and country(s) of origin to almost be considered distinct. In any case, it's these restaurant tastes that BIR cooking enthusiasts are trying to replicate and emulate and with restaurant and takeaway quality currently going through a bit of an iffy patch IME, sometimes, to improve upon, not to mention that ol' chestnut 'saving money'.
The crux of it is this: 'Indian' restaurants use batch/pre-cooking techniques that enable them to whip up lots of curries in a jiffy and it's these methods that imbue that 'restaurant' taste that you will find hard to recreate if you follow a normal step-by-step and ingredient-by-ingredient recipe from say, a Madhur Jaffrey book. There's nothing wrong with those, it's just that those can be more time consuming and are not designed to scale quickly, but those have their own upside, which is that you can get more taste variety. In BIR cooking, since there is a tree of dependencies and precursors that are used across the majority of dishes, if you eat a great deal of it, you may start to notice that some dishes can taste quite similar.
The foundation of a restaurant curry is what is referred to as 'base gravy' which is basically a spiced stock whereby large quantities of onions with a smaller assortment of other vegetables are caramelised to a degree then cooked down with water until they have a melted consistency, then blended. In curry-house kitchens you will see a huge pot of this being kept warm for use in each order; a ladle-full here and there forms the main semi-liquid matrix of the dish.
Restaurants also rely on pre-cooked meats - lamb, beef, chicken and it has to be done this way because something like lamb takes a very long time (a couple of hours) to boil to tender, so to avoid customers having to wait eons till the point of near starvation, the meats are cooked in advance in spices until its time to use them. Another secret ingredient will be the restaurant's 'mixed powder' which is a general purpose spice blend which you can think of as 'curry powder' to some extent and virtually all of the dishes include a garlic/ginger paste mix that is blended in advance.
At the time an order comes in, each different dish will have some combination of whole spices (things like black mustard seed, fennel seed, star anise, bay leaf, cinnamon etc) along with powdered spices (cumin, coriander, turmeric, chili powders of various types etc.), mixed powder, sometimes tomato puree/paste and then whatever that dish calls for in terms of the meat/protein, other vegetables/additions such as coconut milk, chutneys etc. and then of course the base gravy I talked about.
In this thread I hope to show how to go from zero to producing some completed dishes, focusing on what we call 'curries' (i.e. I won't be showing how to cook onion bhajis, or naan breads - I'm more of an expert in boiling things for a long time).
So, if you want to know how Indian restaurants 'do it' and how to replicate that restaurant taste, stay tuned!
P.S. Yes, I have been to India (about 5 times I think - Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad). Also, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka multiple times each too. I love much of the food in these places (er, also, there's some which I didn't really fancy tbh) which is 'same, same but different', but also, infinitely more varied. I think BIR cooking captures only a sliver of what the subcontinent has which is to be expected.
'BIR' as the title says, is an acronym for British Indian Restaurant. I don't really know that much of the history of the food but I do know that it's descended from that which was cooked to the liking of British colonists of India during the British Raj (colonisation of India) and also that it's somewhat of a misnomer in the modern day, since the majority of curry houses in the UK are Bangladeshi-owned and run. Nevertheless, what Brits get when we 'go for a curry' on a Friday night has a taste that is known and loved across the islands with some iconic dishes such as Chicken Tikka Masala and Lamb Vindaloo, many of which have evolved away from their parent recipes and country(s) of origin to almost be considered distinct. In any case, it's these restaurant tastes that BIR cooking enthusiasts are trying to replicate and emulate and with restaurant and takeaway quality currently going through a bit of an iffy patch IME, sometimes, to improve upon, not to mention that ol' chestnut 'saving money'.
The crux of it is this: 'Indian' restaurants use batch/pre-cooking techniques that enable them to whip up lots of curries in a jiffy and it's these methods that imbue that 'restaurant' taste that you will find hard to recreate if you follow a normal step-by-step and ingredient-by-ingredient recipe from say, a Madhur Jaffrey book. There's nothing wrong with those, it's just that those can be more time consuming and are not designed to scale quickly, but those have their own upside, which is that you can get more taste variety. In BIR cooking, since there is a tree of dependencies and precursors that are used across the majority of dishes, if you eat a great deal of it, you may start to notice that some dishes can taste quite similar.
The foundation of a restaurant curry is what is referred to as 'base gravy' which is basically a spiced stock whereby large quantities of onions with a smaller assortment of other vegetables are caramelised to a degree then cooked down with water until they have a melted consistency, then blended. In curry-house kitchens you will see a huge pot of this being kept warm for use in each order; a ladle-full here and there forms the main semi-liquid matrix of the dish.
Restaurants also rely on pre-cooked meats - lamb, beef, chicken and it has to be done this way because something like lamb takes a very long time (a couple of hours) to boil to tender, so to avoid customers having to wait eons till the point of near starvation, the meats are cooked in advance in spices until its time to use them. Another secret ingredient will be the restaurant's 'mixed powder' which is a general purpose spice blend which you can think of as 'curry powder' to some extent and virtually all of the dishes include a garlic/ginger paste mix that is blended in advance.
At the time an order comes in, each different dish will have some combination of whole spices (things like black mustard seed, fennel seed, star anise, bay leaf, cinnamon etc) along with powdered spices (cumin, coriander, turmeric, chili powders of various types etc.), mixed powder, sometimes tomato puree/paste and then whatever that dish calls for in terms of the meat/protein, other vegetables/additions such as coconut milk, chutneys etc. and then of course the base gravy I talked about.
In this thread I hope to show how to go from zero to producing some completed dishes, focusing on what we call 'curries' (i.e. I won't be showing how to cook onion bhajis, or naan breads - I'm more of an expert in boiling things for a long time).
So, if you want to know how Indian restaurants 'do it' and how to replicate that restaurant taste, stay tuned!
P.S. Yes, I have been to India (about 5 times I think - Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad). Also, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka multiple times each too. I love much of the food in these places (er, also, there's some which I didn't really fancy tbh) which is 'same, same but different', but also, infinitely more varied. I think BIR cooking captures only a sliver of what the subcontinent has which is to be expected.
