Make every curry a great one
The internet is full of recipes written by people that have never had Indian food. Recipes that tell you adding a bit of curry powder to some chicken is a curry. I started researching this after trying one or two of them just to see what would come out the other side. Was not pretty… I’m not being nice here. That’s true. I’m sorry. I really hope that doesn’t stop you from reading on. But seriously. Ask yourself – Is today the day I want to make bad fake Indian food? Full blown restaurant Indian is a bit complicated but totally achievable if you plan ahead. Homestyle Indian is just wonderful, magical stuff. But it takes time. In between – I give you nearly Indian restaurant style chicken saag. Fast enough to make on a whim. And close to what you get in restaurants. Really close, in fact. Read all about it in this nearly Indian restaurant cooking primer.
Chicken saag starts with onions
The key is the onions. That’s a big part of Indian cooking. Homestyle cooking relies on deeply browning the onions. Think onion soup. Like 30 minutes of browning. Restaurant style replaces that by cooking huge amounts of onions in what they call the curry base. Do it once in volume and then crank out curries to order. If you are interested, read all about Indian restaurant cooking techniques. What makes this chicken saag work is still the onions. No getting around that. But it swaps out 30 minutes of careful browning with 10 minutes in the microwave. Crazy sounding but it works. I got the idea from a Chef’s Steps onion puree. They use it replace cream in recipes. I use it to replace curry base. That’s the secret. The gee whiz. The secret to nearly restaurant chicken saag. Or any other nearly restaurant style curry.
Nearly restaurant style curry is a new way to cook
As far as I can tell, this is a first in Indian cooking. I’m probably wrong about that but I can’t find anything like this anywhere. And I looked. A lot. Let me know if you’ve seen this somewhere else please. Don’t mean to claim honours here if it’s been done anywhere. The technique here borrows heavily from Indian restaurant technique. That’s why it works. Some tweaks of course. But that’s breaking new ground… Nearly restaurant ain’t bad. Pretty good even. Try it and let me know what you think…
Looking for other nearly restaurant style curries?
Madras chicken curry Chicken jalfrezi Chicken tikka masala Chettinad chicken curry
