The ‘ingredients’ of a curry are generally made up of meat or fish, vegetables and spices.  These give the dish its flavour and varying quantities result in different dishes.  For example, Balti and Jalfrezi contain green chillies, green peppers and tomatoes but it’s the amounts used that gives each dish its unique style.  What all BIR curries have in common however is their basic ‘curry sauce’.  Made up of onions, tomato puree, garam masala, turmeric, salt, oil and water this staple mixture is what binds all your other ingredients together and creates the curry texture.

What to do:

• Peel plenty, whole white onions.
• Place in a large pan and cover with water.  Add a little oil and salt and boil until soft.
• Add a good measure of turmeric and garam masala and a small carton of good quality tomato puree.
• Blend the mixture until smooth, adding more water as required until the desired consistency is achieved – NOTE: the sauce will reduce as it is cooked in the dish.

And there you have it, your very own curry sauce base, ready to be added to your next curry dish!

We know you’ll be looking for quantities in the recipe above – we did too – but after speaking to many different chefs, each has their own way of making a curry sauce.  They all agreed on the ingredients needed but some like it sweeter and add more tomato puree, others prefer to start with a neutral sauce and let the other curry ingredients add the flavour and so just add a dash of garam masala and turmeric.

Making a big batch ready to add into any curry was also a unanimous verdict from our professional chefs, rather making a fresh sauce each time.  Why not experiment yourself  and let us know how you get on?