Basic curry sauce recipe

By Angela Boggiano

  1. Makes 3 curries, each serving 4
  2. Takes 5 minutes to make, 25-30 minutes to cook, plus cooling
  3. Rating

This is a great home-made curry sauce, which can be frozen in batches and transformed into three different curries: Creamy chicken korma, Lamb rogan josh, and Prawn madras – ideal for entertaining or feeding the family.

tried and tested
Basic curry sauce

Ingredients

  1. 3 large onions, roughly chopped
  2. 12 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
  3. 8cm piece fresh ginger, roughly chopped
  4. 2 tsp cumin seeds
  5. 2 tsp fennel seeds
  6. 2 bay leaves
  7. 1 cinnamon stick
  8. 6 tbsp groundnut oil
  9. 1 tbsp ground coriander
  10. 1 tbsp ground turmeric
  11. 2 tbsp tomato purée
  12. 1 tsp salt

Method

  1. 1. Place the chopped onions, garlic and ginger in a food processor and blitz to make a paste.
  2. 2. Heat a large non-stick frying pan, add the cumin seeds, fennel seeds, bay leaves and cinnamon stick and let them sizzle for a minute. Add the oil and, once hot, pour in the paste from the food processor and fry for 10-15 minutes until golden brown.
  3. 3. Add the ground spices, tomato purée and salt and pour in 600ml water. Bring to a simmer for 10 minutes until thickened.
  4. 4. Leave to cool completely, then divide evenly between 3 containers, label and freeze for up to 3 months. Defrost each portion as you need it and use the curry base to make any of the following curries.

Chef's tip

1. Freezing intensifies the seasoning, so taste the curry sauce and adjust the seasoning to taste. 2. Ladle the curry sauce into freezer bags, place in rigid containers and freeze until solid, then remove the containers and your sauces will be frozen into easily storable shapes.

More curry recipes

30 minute Thai menu
How to make chicken tikka masala
Vegetarian curry recipes
Quick curry recipes
Indian recipes for vegetarians

Comments

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daisyrift

December 5

this curry sauce is brilliant only used it with rogan josh and balti dishes not tried korma yet....i love making curries and this works i tried and tested it on some indian friends who were amazed that the finished product looked and tasted authentic and as if it had been cooked traditionally..i have to put more chilli and salt in personally thanks 5*****

annie burch

October 5

I made the basic curry recipe but there weren't any following recipes with which to use it

Kitkat75

November 18

I used this to make the chicken korma recipe and it was amazing!

erinehm

June 29

I made some amazing balti lamb burgers using a quantity of this curry sauce. Recipe here: http://tinyurl.com/mghkf

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