If you want to learn how to make Indian restaurant curries at home this is the place to start. Indian restaurant curry base or base gravy is the foundation of the whole thing. Get this figured out and you are on your way to making better curries than you can buy.
Indian restaurants cook a whack of different curries to order. Ever wonder how they do it? For sure they don’t have 25 curries simmering away in the kitchen.
Nobody can run a restaurant like that. They have a secret. Indian restaurant curry base.
Curry base is how Indian restaurants can cook to order
It’s cooked to order and it’s done using curry base. Curry base is at the heart of every Indian restaurant kitchen. Giant pots of it simmering away.
Once I heard about it I started asking waiters. I met kitchen staff. Talked about it with a chef or two. I was on the inside. Now you are too…
Never heard of curry base? Not surprising. For the longest time it was a closely guarded secret. Even now, Indian restaurant curry base recipes are carefully guarded secrets.
A hint of carrot – ooohhhh. A bit of cabbage – aaahhh. A green pepper – ssshhhh. But that’s how it’s done.
It’s a bit ridiculous. In it’s simplest form it’s just a lot of boiled onions with some spices and oil. Seriously. Cook it up and it tastes like a weak curry onion soup. Nothing to it. Not particularly tasty.
The magic is in the cooking technique
But when you layer the Indian restaurant technique on top it’s magic. Something wonderful happens to that insipid onion soup. It caramelizes. The Maillard reaction kicks in. The depth of flavour is – well it’s restaurant quality.
It’s not hard. It’s just a matter of rolling up your sleeves and getting it done. Chop some onions. Add some water and some seasoning and boil. Puree. Boil some more. Done.
You can get a quick lesson on cooking Indian restaurant curry here.
You use this base in recipes like Indian restaurant madras, lamb curry, jalfrezi or chicken tikka masala. Look around – there are lots of Indian restaurant curry recipes here.
One thing to note. Indian restaurant curries are big on oil. This recipe is about as low as you can go on the oil. Don’t use less. It just won’t work. Indian restaurant curry is a lot of things but low calorie it is not.
If you want to cook Indian restaurant style curries this the first step. The real deal.
Watch the video (there’s real audio)
indian restaurant curry base
Ingredients
- 8 large onions – about 2.5 lbs peeled weight
- 6-8 cloves garlic peeled
- 1 1/2 Tbsp ginger coarsely chopped
- 1 1/2 Tbsp cumin powder
- 1 1/2 Tbsp coriander powder
- 1 1/2 tsp turmeric
- 1 1/2 tsp salt
- 12-15 fresh cilantro stalks with leaves – roots removed
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- 12 cups boiling water
- 15 oz can diced tomatoes – one small can
Instructions
Step 1
- Bring the water to a boil (a kettle works well for this).
- Quarter the onions and then break them apart into petals (roughly – two or three petals per quarter)
- Combine all ingredients except tomatoes, bring to a gentle boil and simmer, loosely covered, for one hour. Use a big pot!
- Add tomatoes, stir and simmer an additional 20 minutes
- Let cool slightly. Blend to smooth consistency. Make sure you remove the centre cap from the blender lid and cover the hole with a cloth or you will be cleaning the ceiling. Alternately you can use an immersion blender.
Step 2
- Wipe out the pot and return pureed curry base and simmer, loosely covered, until the oil separates out – this can take an hour or more. Stir the oil back into the base. At this point you can portion out the base into 2 cup portions and freeze if desired.
Is this a base curry that will help me create recipes more in line with American Indian restaurant cooking or the style of curry served in British Indian restaurants?
That’s an interesting question. It really depends on what your local restaurants are serving. I have had many from the US tell me that they are making curries that are as good or better than what they are getting at home. This style base is consistent with what I have eaten in UK, what I get here in Canada and what I have mostly eaten in the US so the American vs British thing is not obvious to me.
If your local restaurants are serving curry similar to what you may have experienced in India (I have had that style in California in particular) then you might be better served to look at cooking what I call Indian hotel style curries – https://staging2.glebekitchen.com/hotel-style-indian-curry-gravy/
I have started posting recipes in this style – you can find them under the recipe index/indian tab at the top of the page. Not a clear answer I’m afraid but without tasting what you are eating it’s really hard to say.
Hi Romain, love your website. In cooking terms I’m a complete novice but I have cooked a few of your recipes for my family and they all loved them. I wonder if you could let us know the make and model of your cooker and the settings that you use for low, medium low, medium, medium high and high. We could then work out the equivalent settings on our own cookers. This will increase the chances of us replicating your results. Thanks, Martin
It’s an imprecise system I agree. I have a DCS 6 burner cooktop with each burner capable of outputting 20K BTU. However, I don’t use it as a reference in terms of low, medium low etc because it is a fair bit higher output than the average cooker.
What I have done is take my best guess at what the output would be on a regular cooktop (I have a vacation home with a conventional electric cooker that helps me calibrate). So low is intended to be reasonable close to low on a normal output cooker (and so on).
Thanks Romain, good to know that your recipes are designed for conventional electric cookers. It was only after I’d posted my query that I remembered from one of your videos that you used gas (thus, I thought, rendering my query pointless). Without your clarification I might have been overcooking on the basis that ‘Romain uses gas and therefore gets much better heat than my electric cooker’.
Hi Romaine,I have now produced several restaurant style dishes which turned out to be brilliant.
I want to try a fish curry next.Bit concerned about spicing as the fish has vey delicate flavour,
Any advice on this? I prefer to make my curries the day before eating as the “maturation”seems to improve the flavour.Am I to be classed as an heretic for suggesting this?
Thenks again for sharing your skills and experience.
Best wishes.Malcolm.
You’re not a heretic for liking your curries more the next day. I’m not sure if they are actually better or I can taste better because my palate isn’t overloaded from cooking but I find the same thing some days.
Fish curry – really depends on the curry you choose. I tend to like fish curries with coconut milk as I find it smooths out the edges of the spices. I also like a simply spiced fish curry with some panch phoran because that’s what I grew up eating.
This turned out such a lovely silky texture, and SO tasty! It was 100% worth the effort
And now you are ready to make lots and lots of great curries!
Hi Romaine,
I made a B.I.R.Sauce a while ago from recipe using 6 or so veg ingredients.Discouraged me a bit as it was horrible!
Decided to try again.I have just finished making a batch of your basic sauce and I am astonished how “right” it tastes.This is what I have been searching for for years (I am 75!) Much appreciated you are a star!
Looking forward to trying the curry recipes.Best regards & stay well.
Malcolm.
Great to hear you finally got what you’ve been looking for. I am not a fan of adding a bunch of vegetables to my curry base either!
Making my 3rd batch of this curry base In 3 months, using a few more onions and never been back to a takeaway. All recipes being tried but the Pathia is still my best. Well worth making and freezing in portion sizes, thank you.
Great to hear it’s going well. Freezing it is definitely the way to go. Curry anytime!
Romain, discovering your site has been truly revolutionary! My wife has an unusual allergy to ginger, which has all but ruled out Indian restaurant/takeaway food for her due to the garlic-ginger paste that’s in nearly every recipe. I’m a keen home cook, so I’ve experimented with numerous home-style curry recipes, but never got close to replicating the restaurant taste. Once I’d read your articles on curry base, spice mixes etc. I decided to go for it – the results were just remarkable! Obviously my garlic paste leaves out ginger, but this doesn’t change the end result that much. My wife hadn’t tasted curry like this for years! I’ll be trying as many curry recipes as I can to perfect my method! Thanks again.
That is just fantastic to hear. I’m glad to hear your wife is getting her curry fix now and that you are getting results you are happy with!
I love this site!! I went all out, pre made all my spice mixes, then made up the Curry base and made Chicken Madras twice, Chicken Tikka Masala Twice and Chicken Jalfrezi twice (used chicken Tikka in this instead of plain chicken) so ended up with 12 portions. We ate one of each fresh and froze the rest. All were absolutely brilliant. Best curry recipes ever! Thank you so much for sharing.
Thank you so much for saying so! Great to hear that everything is working out for you. Chicken tikka jalfrezi sounds fantastic. I think that’s my dinner tomorrow night!
Making my second batch of this today. Seems I’ve made 12 curries in the past 3 weeks 🙂 .. They have all tasted wonderful. Thanks a lot for your great recipes and method/instructions.
You are very, very welcome!
Well, the mystery is solved. I couldn’t figure out why my curry base came out very gravy-like last time (still tasted amazing though and made top-notch bombay aloo), and turns out my onions must be jumbo-sized! Welcome to America. I didn’t weigh them last time, but when I weighed 8 onions today (peeled), they were 6 lbs! So I only used 4. The base looks nice and liquid this time. I also decided to add some kala namak this time in addition to regular salt and I absolutely loved how it enhanced the smell.
Yay! I’m glad you figured it out. Those are some pretty big onions indeed. 2 1/2-3 lbs is about perfect for this curry base.
I’m making the base sauce and have a small query. Is it 1 and 1/2 tbsp of cumin powder etc or one 1/2 tbsp. I’ve gone on the basis that it is 1 and 1 1/2 and I’ve just put everything on for step one. I’m really looking forward to making an actual curry with this base sauce. TIA. Anne xx
You are safe! It is 1 and 1/2 tbsp.
I’m on day 7 of your MONTREAL SMOKED MEAT recipe – I had had never explored your site ( except for the MSM recipe) – With all this pandemic time on my hands I decided to fully explore the many recipes and videos you have compiled. Great work!! In my humble opinion your simple, thoughtfull and accessible approach to cooking is refreshing — keep up the good work – PS The curry base is on the stove– PS wish I could upload pics of the brisket to your site
Thank you. I hope you find lots to enjoy here. The curry base is a gateway recipe BTW – you are about to go down the Indian restaurant cooking rabbit hole. Welcome! It’s fun.
If you post your brisket to Facebook and PM me or leave another comment here, I’ll post it on the glebekitchen Facebook page if you’d like. Happy to do that!
Hi there Romain,
Love the website, giving me plenty of inspiration with extra free time in lockdown. I wanted to ask why in this recipe you chose not to brown the onions and slightly toasting spices before adding water? I know in your recipes you brown the curry base as you go but would it not hurt to brown a little at this stage as a fail safe? Also do you have any thoughts on adding other veggies, maybe subbing a couple of onions for a rib of celery and a red bell pepper?
Thank you.
I like to keep my curry base really simple. There is only the faintest amount of spice in this version. The real flavour comes from cooking the individual curries. I think blooming the spices is unnecessary but probably not harmful either.
Browning the onions would take forever so I have never tried. I think it would move the overall profile of the curry base towards the sweeter end of the spectrum and I don’t think I personally would like that.
Peppers and celery I am pretty violently opposed to. I tried it once and every curry I cooked with that base tasted of peppers and celery. Never again. But everyone is different and maybe it will appeal to you.
Made this for a tikka masala on the first day of lockdown for the family and they were absolutely blown away. It was dellicious. Making a new batch of curry base now to freeze for later on. It has transformed by cooking of curry. I will use this for family parties and get-togethers in larger quantities when this is all over. Thank you so much.
That’s great to hear. Cooking Indian restaurant style isn’t that daunting once you get a few tricks down.
Note that the recipes don’t really scale linearly and the heat required to get that restaurant taste mean that it’s best to make multiple small batches when serving larger crowds.
Ok so 2 cups in batches for each curry after cooking , do you use it as it is or do you water it down before making a curry
Thank
If the consistency is somewhere between milk and light cream you are good to go. It should be somewhere around that but if it’s thicker do add a bit of water. A slightly longer cooking time (from more than 2 cups of liquid if you wind up there) isn’t a bad thing at all…
Would it be OK to let the first stage of base recipe cool before blending and then heat for the last hour to add to curry ingredients.
Yes, that’s fine. Probably safer that way as well.
What kind of onions do you use?
Plain everyday yellow cooking onions.
Hi looking forward to trying this out have been struggling for years.
Are the measurements level or heaped spoons.
Cheers
steve
I think you will be happy! I struggled for years as well once upon a time.
All measurements are level. Always.
Hi, I have made the curry base as per instructions and frozen individual potions, can’t find a curry to add this too, or am I looking in the wrong place?
Please can you point me in the right direction or tell me how I use this base.
Thank you
If you go to the Indian tab in the top menu (under recipe index) any of the recipes called restaurant style (not nearly restaurant style – that’s a little different) use the curry base. There are also links in the text above to a few example recipes.
How long can you keep the curry base in the fridge?
Think of it as onion soup. You can keep it as long as you would keep that. A few days certainly. I like to freeze it in curry or double curry size portions personally. Just pull it out when I am in the mood for a restaurant style curry.