Indian curry gravy, hotel style. This is something new. But something old. Probably really old. And the start of something new. And wonderful. For me. And hopefully for you.
If you like big, bold curries. If you want curries with a lush sauce that makes your mouth dance. Then this might just be the thing you didn’t know you were looking for.
I didn’t know I was looking for it. Until I found out about it. Then I knew I had to have it. And I can’t believe how good it is.
Not your everyday restaurant style curry gravy
This is not how they make curries in restaurants outside India. This is how they do it in India. And it’s incredible.
Want to make curries like you get at your local takeaway? Like they do at every day Indian restaurants around the world.? Then there are many, many recipes on glebekitchen. I call those restaurant style.
This is something different. My guess is this is how they do it at posh restaurants. The best of the best.
I’m just getting started with this. And I’m truly excited. Inspired even. On a mission. This needs to be a thing. My thing. Your thing.
What’s old is new
I have a theory. It’s just a theory. So if you’re going to shoot me down be nice. Or don’t. I can take it. But do try to be constructive at least.
I think this is how it’s been done in India for a million years. Well, maybe not a million. But a very, very long time. It’s closer to traditional technique. But adapted for restaurant style cooking.
Indian restaurant style cooking has it’s roots in the UK. At least the style I write about. Indians came to the UK working on ships back in the day.
Apparently they weren’t fans of life on the open sea. Because once they got to the UK they decided to stay rather than face the voyage home.
They needed work. And a lot of them wound up working in restaurants. Those sailors turned cooks became the architects of what is now mainstream Indian restaurant cooking in the UK.
Mainstream has it’s roots in hotel style
The sailors started with what they knew. That’s only natural. And I’m guessing what they knew was curry gravy – hotel style.
As with all things, it evolved. The thick curry gravy became a thinner version. What’s now called base gravy. They dropped the deep browning of the onions. Because it was easier. Simpler. Less work. And it worked well. Everybody loved it.
It became mainstream. Global. People worked in Indian restaurants in the UK. They migrated around the world. And they took the technique with them. Everywhere.
Except for the mothership. They stuck to their roots. Kept the faith. And somehow nobody is blogging about it. Nothing on YouTube. In English anyway.
Until now. I’m picking up the torch. Because I believe. And like any zealot, I’m hoping I can convince you.
This is curry gravy for bold curries
The nice thing about UK style Indian restaurant cooking is there’s only one curry base. It’s bland by design. One size fits all.
I’m a huge proponent of that. I like to let my curries speak for themselves. One base. Many curries. Easy. Simple. Just like those cooks in the UK figured out..
And I love what you can do with those techniques. Don’t get me wrong. It’s amazing. Seriously amazing. This intro to Indian restaurant curries is a great place to start.
But if you want to take it to the next level? Want to follow me down the rabbit hole? This is how. Curry gravy built for specific curries. Genius.
Not quite bespoke. But not off the rack either. The right tool for the job. How can that not make things better?
This is the bold version. It’s for madras. Garlic chilli chicken. Jalfrezi. Ceylon. For the curries where flavours are applied with a sledge hammer.
It is not for chicken tikka masala. Or korma. Or butter chicken. It is not delicate. That’s a different curry gravy. I’ll get to that. I’m just starting with the version that goes with my favourite curries.
This is a game changer
This is a whole different approach. And right now I’m think I’m probably the only one talking about it. So you are probably thinking this is crazy.
And it is crazy. Crazy good. If you want to push it. If you want to take it to the next level. Then think about trying this. It’s a whole new way of making restaurant style curries.
Except that it’s about as old as the hills. Doesn’t matter though. What matters is this curry gravy makes amazing curries. I’m not saying this way is better. But I am thinking it…
Indian curry gravy – hotel style
Ingredients
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- 3 lbs onions chopped – use a food processor
- 2 lbs fresh tomatoes chopped (or substitute plain canned tomatoes)
- 5 green cardamom pods
- 10 black peppercorns
- 3 cloves
- 1 tej patta Indian bay leaf (optional)
- 2 inch cinnamon stick or cassia bark
- 1/4 cup garlic ginger paste
- 2 tsp turmeric
- 1 tbsp kashmiri chili powder
- 1 tbsp cumin powder
- 2 tbsp coriander powder
- 1 tbsp kosher salt
- 4 green chilies seeded
- handful of cilantro
- 1 cup water
Instructions
- You need a lot of chopped onions for this. Do yourself a favour and use a food processor if you have one. Peel and half the onions. Cut each half into six pieces. Fill your food processor about 2/3 full and pulse around 5-8 times. You should have diced onions. Repeat until you have chopped all the onions.
- As long as your food processor is out use it to chop the tomatoes (if using fresh). Easy.
- Heat the oil in a pot large enough to hold all the ingredients.
- Add the oil and heat over medium heat.
- Once the oil starts to shimmer add the cardamom, black peppercorns, cloves, cinnamon and optional Indian bay leaf.
- Let the spices bubble for about 20 seconds and then add the onions.
- This takes some time and attention. Cook the onions over medium heat. Stir every minute of so. You want them brown. Nice and brown. Not tan. Brown. Think French onion soup. This is going to take you around 30-40 minutes and maybe more. But you are doing it once. For 8 restaurant portions of curry. So it's under 5 minutes a curry. Totally worth it.
- While the onions cook do the rest of your prep. Make sure the tomatoes are chopped. Cut your green chilies in half and seed them (use a spoon).
- Add the turmeric, cumin, coriander and kashmiri chili powder in a bowl. Add about a 1/2 cup of water and stir to make a slurry. You may need to add a bit more water. Doesn't matter.
- Once the onions are this nice creamy brown mess add the garlic ginger paste. Stir to combine and continue to cook for about two minutes.
- Add the powdered spice slurry and the salt. Cook another 3 minutes.
- Add the chopped tomatoes, green chilies and cilantro. Simmer until the tomatoes are broken down. This takes about 10 minutes. The oil may have separated at this point. If it did, do NOT remove it. It's pure flavour.
- Add a cup of water. Puree the hotel style curry gravy, whole spices and all. Yes. Whole spices get pureed. Use a blender. If it's too thick to puree add a bit more water.
- You should now have about 8 cups of magic curry gravy to use in all sorts of curries.
Hi
Can I substitute English Bay for Indian or are we dealing with a totally different flavour?
They are completely different. Just leave the Tej Patta out if you can’t find it.
Just leave the Tej Patta out if you can’t find it, I had no idea you had a bit of the Irish in you, to be sure i do now, “top of the mornin to you Romain 🙂
Haha. I didn’t know I had a bit of Irish in me either. “Top of the mornin’ to you Mike:-)”
Made this the other day and it tastes pretty good on it’s own – My wife asked if we could just have some of the sauce for dinner!
Haha. It’s pretty tasty stuff on its own for sure. The opposite of a regular curry base.
Hi Romain
Lovely recipe (and even better results). Please keep your posts coming. They are inspirational
Michael
Thank you Michael. I published a Ceylon chicken curry recipe that makes use of the hotel style curry gravy this morning! Many more to come.
Another advantage to this way of cooking is that it will be easier to scale up recipes. The need to have high heat in order to get the Maillard reaction moving along is one the factors that makes cooking for a croud using curry base difficult – most home stove tops don’t have the burner size and output to cook more than a portions at once.
Exactly! Maillard up front. Not in the pan to order.
Oooh, Romain! I made a batch of this loveliness last night and I have to say it’s just fantastic! It is now sitting in my freezer in batches screaming to be used. Awaiting further instruction, sir! xx
First one coming Monday! And more right after that.
No pressure! (but can’t wait!)
This looks fantastic, can’t wait to try some recipes with it. Anything that expands our knowledge of Indian cooking is a beautiful thing!
Recipes coming very soon!
Do we really need this ? Surely , base gravy will cover most sins. Now getting in to the realms of BIR discussions , which I know you dislike .
Base gravy is a fine thing. Think of this as master class.
But as long as you are making dishes you are happy with, you are where you need to be!
I always want to do better so I’m off on this mission! My goal is simply to help people make the best food they possibly can. Maybe some day you’ll join me. Or not. Doesn’t matter. What matters is you enjoy what you cook.
Hi Romain, the recipe says it makes about 8 cups. I’ve ended up with about 2.8 litres which I think is about 12 cups. It seems quite thick though. How much will each curry recipe use?
The only thing I can think of is I browned the onions longer than you did? Doesn’t seem likely as I know you can cook so I’m really at a loss.
Each restaurant sized portion will require one cup so 8 curries per batch.
Solved! My apologies, the problem was that the graduation marks on the inside of my cooking pot are so wildly out as to be laughable. On decanting the curry sauce into my usual tubs, hey presto! There was almost exactly 8 cups worth.
Haha. Thanks. You really had me scratching my head…
Don’t take too long, I’ve already made a batch in anticipation!
I’m on it! Coming next Monday latest.
Hi Romain
Made the gravy the aroma is exquisite and it tastes fantastic. Can’t wait for next week.
Ian
Awesome. You might well be the first!
This approach is inspired. Your communication and passion for the subject, as well as the obvious quality of the recipes, deserves a wider audience.
Jalfrezi recipe with this base please!! Or (please God) a Jhaaldaar…..
Thank you for saying! Jalfrezi is on the list.
Hi Romain
It is so exciting, I can’t wait for the recipes that I can use this gravy for ????
First one next week! Maybe sooner if people keep leaving comments like this:-)
Thank you, Romain!
This recipe looks amazing and I can’t wait to try it. Your recipes are the best and have really lifted my curry making game. Looking forward very much for recipes to use with this (you’re such a tease!). Again, many thanks.
Don’t mean to be a tease although I have to say it’s kind of fun:-) I will publish some recipes as quickly as I can. I was working on the first one tonight as a matter of fact!
Hi Romain,
Would you use this curry gravy with any of the vindaloo recipes, or stick with the curry base.
Also which vindaloo is the best as I need to impress thanks.
P.S your recipes are fantastic, thank you
Thank you. Very kind of you to say!
The hotel gravy isn’t meant to work as is with the regular restaurant style curries. I do have a hotel vindaloo coming but it will be a few weeks yet.
If you want to stick to vindaloo then try this one with the paste. https://staging2.glebekitchen.com/chicken-vindaloo-restaurant-style/ My vindaloo got a lot better once I figured out the restaurants were using pastes.
If you really want to impress, I’m finding the hotel style curries are taking me to a whole different level of curry.
Cant wait to make this. There are more steps than your Restaurant Style curry base – does this mean the finished curry will have less steps? I love making your recipes but find my stove a mess afterwards!
The beauty of this approach is the curry gravy is already full of the wonderful Maillard flavours so you don’t have to crank the heat when you add the curry base. And you don’t add it in stages. So less steps that way and way less splatter. I’d still wear old clothes but it isn’t the full on mess like regular restaurant style cooking.
Hi, I love your curry recipes , they go down a treat at home, I’m about to make this new curry base, just one question, do you also blend the cassia bark ? I have never used this before, having just had it delivered, it looks to be very “woody” excuse the pun lol. Thanks in advance.
Great to hear you are enjoying the recipes! Yes, you blend all the whole spices in. Your blender can do more than you think.
Hi Romain,
Congratulations on the Hotel Style recipes. These remind me of the Glasgow Indian Takeaway Recipe Book which I wrote for Alex Wilkie in the UK several years ago. The base was pretty much a finished curry that needed little cooking but you added items to create individual flavours. It was loved by Scots and expats world wide and a complete mystery to those in England who couldn’t comprehend there were other ways to cook a restaurant curry without making a thin base. I made this today and we all loved the 4 curries I made. Cant wait for more from you, including perhaps red and white bases?
Great story. Glad you enjoyed my version. I’m really loving what I can do with it!
Red gravy is next (fairly soon and along with a few makhani recipes). White gravy after that. Or a lighter flavoured yellow gravy before white. Haven’t decided that yet. I have a lot of work to do yet on this.
I can’t believe it. I have that book on my kindle. The curry base sauce is great and I have made it many times. I grew up and got married in Glasgow and I miss having curry restaurants at nearly every corner. I learned how to make curries when I lived there as I could not afford to eat out all the time and I think I now have about ten or twelve Indian recipe books now. I live in Ohio now and there are hardly any Indian Restaurants here and the sauce is nothing like back home. Ah, the memories.
Alex Wilkie is another one of my favourites. I didn’t know that he had an Indian cook book out. He now mainly does Chinese cooking on his YouTube channel which is also great. By the way thanks for sharing your great recipes Romain.
You are very welcome! I hear his chasni recipe is very good.
Hi, to reduce the mess I’m cooking the restaurant style curries in a large/high stainless steel cooking pot. Most of the splashes get caught on the inner walls of the pot. During the really messy steps I’m sometimes covering the pot with a splash guard.
This works quite well.
Thanks for the tip!
Hi Roman
Thank you for sharing this amazing aromatic recipe
Combination of all the spices is really aromatic.
I hope you like the recipes that use this curry gravy!
Wonderful news, my curries are fantastic, have not served a mediocre one to my family yet, think I’m in love with you xxx.
So sweet. This one will be a fun new way to cook curries I think. And it’s even easier once the curry base is done.
Hi Romain
I’m going to make this tomorrow, will it freeze?
I can’t wait to try this in your first curry.
I’ve tried most of the curries you’ve posted using the original curry base and techniques and they are magic.
Please hurry with the first recipe.
Ian
It will freeze. I will update the recipe to reflect this. I meant to say that – just slipped my mind. The first recipe is coming next week!
You didn’t forget. It is mentioned in your first post. Is the first recipe ready yet please? Tom.
There are 14 done so far. Have a look at the Indian tab under Recipes. Anything labelled hotel style works with this gravy.
Oh this sounds exciting…look forward to the accompanying recipes
I don’t want to over-promote it but I am having great success with this. Recipes are coming just as fast as I can get them out!
This is very exciting. Looking forward to the recipe using this base.
Won’t be long!
Hi Romain,
Fascinating post, I can’t wait to get started on my first batch.
Is this used interchangeably with curry base? If so, how do I use it since this makes 1 cup servings and most of your restaurant style recipes call for 2 cups of base.
Barry
Have to say I’m pretty fascinated myself. It’s not the same as regular curry base and the techniques are not the same. If you try a regular restaurant style curry recipe you will wind up with one very thick, overpowering curry.
I had to post this first to lay the groundwork. The next post will be the first of many hotel style curry recipes. Sorry to make you wait.
I suspected that to be the case. I am now even more excited for future curry recipes than I usually am.