Curry Magic 🍛 🪄
A Royal Recipe & Mastering Flavor Layers
Today’s recipe drop is absolutely delicious and loaded with flavor… we are talking curry magic. First a few quick housekeeping notes.
Reminder:
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Soul-in-a-Bowl 🍛
It’s no secret that I love Indian cuisine. Exciting spices, wonderful smells, intense flavors… good Indian food is intoxicating for the senses in the best way. 🤤
Curry takes center stage when people think of Indian food so we are going to hit a big one today.
There are a dizzying number of curries. You’ve got regional India curries, a whole related genre of British-Indian-Restaurant style curries, and the curry cooking methods themselves can be broken down into restaurant style, hotel style and home style.
The key is in properly layering flavors by blooming the required spices and aromatics properly.
Under-bloomed spices in curry produce a bland flavor and “coarse” texture… total waste of time and let down. 😒
Blooming the spices too long will produce an acrid and overly bitter flavor that pierces any good flavors that were there. 😩
So where do we start?
I’m taking you step-by-step through a classic OG curry that is perfect for curry newbies and seasoned curry eaters alike.
Lamb Rogan Josh
Rogan Josh is a classic preparation from the Kashmir region of India 🇮🇳. This curry is traditionally made with mutton, lamb or goat… today we will use lamb.
How is this a “Royal Curry”?
Many people would regard Vindaloo and Jalfrezi as the King and Queen of curries… these are beloved and very popular curries. I would submit that Rogan Josh also belongs in the Royal Family of Curry 🍛. I can’t think of a single Indian restaurant that doesn’t have a Rogan Josh iteration on the menu.
If you’ve cooked much Indian food at all you’ll immediately think “chili” 🌶 when you see Kashmir because Kashmiri chili is one of the most treasured chilis grown in India. It produces a brilliant, bright red color and carries a medium heat. It’s not a blow-your-head-off chili.
This is a key ingredient when making Rogan Josh.
Rogan Josh is a perfect curry to master, and introduce to newbies, because it is not a “super hot” curry. It’s a mild-to medium heat that pleasantly warms the palate.
Curry Making at Home
Once you get into curry making you’ll find that you have multiple versions of the same curry that will bring different flavors to the party… eg: I’ve got 4 different Rogan Josh recipes that I love, each with different styles or slight tweaks. 😂
Curry making can be time consuming but doesn’t have to be. While this isn’t a “tHirTy mInuTe mEaL” it does not take hours of active time. I prefer making curries when I’m not in a rush and have time to enjoy the process. Layering flavors and blooming spices will vary based on your kitchen and heat source, so it’s a very active process. I love it… each time you make curry you’re sharpening your cooking intuition and improving.
I’ve picked homestyle Rogan Josh to share with you because it requires no base gravy making etc. In that regard it’s the simplest way to start and get your feet wet. The flavors are top notch 🤤
Once the base curry is assembled, spices bloomed… the rest of the time is hands off. Don’t let the ingredient list fool you, once you have the spices and aromatics measured out the dish is not laborious or time consuming.
All of the spices and aromatics can be found in Middle Eastern markets or Amazon. If you find yourself having to purchase quite a few, keep in mind that these spices and aromatics are used heavily in Indian cooking so if you’re into curry you’ll definitely end up using them all.
“Rogan” in Persian means clarified butter or oil. Ghee adds an incredible flavor and richness to the gravy.
We will be using a fair amount of fat in order to bloom the spices correctly but then I’m going to show you a trick at the end that removes most of the fat that you can repurpose at a later time.
Ok let’s cook up this flavor bomb Lamb Rogan Josh
