Base

Sauces, purées and base gravies that underpin Indian curries.

5 recipes

Curry Base Gravy

Curry Base Gravy

The foundation sauce behind almost every British-Indian-Restaurant curry. A huge pot of onions is simmered with cumin until completely collapsed, then oil and a small handful of spices go in, then it is blended smooth and held back for service. Once you have a batch in the fridge or freezer, BIR-style curries come together in minutes: a ladle of base into a hot pan with garlic-ginger and spice, then the protein, then finished to order. The sauce itself is mildly sweet and neutral; the character of the finished curry comes from what you do with it at the end.

10 minutes Serves4
Pre-Cooked Chicken

Pre-Cooked Chicken

A BIR-kitchen staple. Chicken breast is simmered in a deeply spiced onion-and-tomato stock just until it is cooked through, then drained and held back for service. The poaching liquid is reduced down into a concentrated spice stock that gets used in the final curries. Pre-cooking lifts the flavour of every BIR-style curry that follows: the chicken is already seasoned through, and the cooking stock carries spice into the finished sauce. Make a big batch, portion into bags, and freeze.

2 hours 10 minutes Serves2
Pre-Cooked Lamb

Pre-Cooked Lamb

The lamb equivalent of pre-cooked chicken: diced lamb browned hard with onion and spices, then simmered slow in its own juices until tender and ready for finishing in a BIR-style curry. Lamb needs longer than chicken so the slow cook is non-optional. The reward is meat that is already seasoned through and falls apart in the final sauce. Portion into freezer bags once cool and a quick lamb madras or rogan josh comes together in 10 minutes from a defrosted bag plus a ladle of [base gravy](curry-base.md).

1 hour 55 minutes Serves1