No Such Thing as Too Hot: The Indian/Curry Thread

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Goons with Spoons > No Such Thing as Too Hot: The Indian/Curry Thread

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

22 Eargesplitten posted:

I found an Asian market within 2.5 miles of my new place, so I'll check that out.

Dones anyone have a recommended recipe for a vegetarian dish aside from saag paneer? I liked the little bit I tried, but I think that it would be too much spinach if I had it for an entire meal.

Manjula's Kitchen and Veg Recipes of India both have great recipes. For instance I like this dal makhani.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2016 14:45

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# ¿ Apr 30, 2024 14:47

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

CommonShore posted:

Actually, here's one for the thread:

Curry is often complex and involved, but does anyone have any kind of curry recipe that's relatively simple for those "oh gently caress it's 9pm and I need to eat and I'm tired and I just want to make something that takes a few minutes and will give me leftovers for lunch tomorrow" moments? Perhaps we can qualify it as any curry which has approximately the same cooking time as a pot of rice.

If you have a pressure cooker you can do any curry super fast. Just pressure cool the lentils/beans until they are done, and meanwhile heat up oil, fry your spices, and then add them to the lentils/beans. ~15-20 minutes from start to finish.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2016 15:52

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

This page and others like it are good references for cooking most things - use it to help you eyeball some cooking times and that'll cut down on the guesswork a bit when trying to go from "X whistles" to some measurement of time that actually works (I just ignore the whistle time measurements in recipes).

# ¿ Oct 27, 2016 02:51

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

Maximum Planck posted:

I bought some dried curry leaves, but read afterwards that they aren't a great substitute for fresh leaves (which I couldn't find) and that they taste very different. Any tips on using these things?

They taste to me mostly like a lot less flavorful fresh ones. Maybe my taste buds are broken. I use them mostly like I would use fresh leaves.

# ¿ Apr 23, 2017 00:25

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

Ayem posted:

Got a lentil question. I'm making Dal Makhani for the first time, and I have two kinds of pulses to choose from, don't know which to use. One is called "Black Matpe Beans"/ "urad dal" which are oval shaped with a white mark on the skin. I also have "beluga lentils", which are solid black and lens-shaped like true lentils.

General Internet search suggests the former are the ones to use, but what's the difference? That's a question I'm having trouble answering.

You want whole urad dal. Whole urad dal are black which is what it sounds like you've got, although I'm a little confused, because there is also split urad dal, which are white.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2018 04:11

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

22 Eargesplitten posted:

Is the dal recipe in the OP going to be more of a soup or thicker curry texture? My wife is Baha�i and at their feasts there would always be dal. I want to try making it, but she said it was the thicker kind and I want to make sure I get it right.

It's whatever you get when you add however much water you add. "The thicker kind" doesn't exactly narrow it down to one kind of dal.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2018 04:24

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

So I live in India now which means I've been eating literally nothing but Indian food for months. I made a ton of Indian food before moving here so there's very little that's actually new, but there are a few things I would never make because they are too much trouble but which are pretty need. For instance, most deep-fried stuff I'd never make, because it's a pain to heat up that much oil, cool it down, filter it, etc. so I never really ate vadas and these things are great.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2018 02:34

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

CommonShore posted:

Ages ago, I think before this thread, someone posted a link to a GWS wiki recipe for some kind of Indian pancake made from fermented yellow split peas. I can't remember wtf they were called. I think it was dino.'s recipe.

Any help? I want to make them again.

http://goonswithspoons.com/Adai

# ¿ Jan 23, 2019 01:55

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

virinvictus posted:

I have been making daal every day for a week. One of my employees brought me a whole sack of spices from his trip to India, and I�m loving it.

I don�t have green chiles, only red Thai. Is that a decent alternative?

For that adai recipe, for making dal, or just generally? Do you mean dried chilies or fresh? What are we talking about?

If it's the adai recipe, you can just leave the chilies out. If they're fresh chilies, you can use them instead of the green ones, although it'll be hot as gently caress.

If it's for a dal recipe, generally you can leave the chilies out or replace them (it'll be hot as gently caress if they're fresh though). If you're replacing fresh with dried, you'll want to add the dried when you add other whole spices rather than with the aromatics.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2019 15:44

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

I don't think an immersion blender will be strong enough to blend pulses, although I've never tried. The better you blend it, the better the final texture is. I don't know what counts as "pretty funky" - anything you're fermenting is going to be funky, because that's why you're fermenting it. You're making it funky.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 02:30

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

Here's a secret: there's not an objective hotness scale that all the Indian restaurants share with each other but hide from the public. They're all just making it up.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2019 16:58

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

I've been watching lots of Indian YouTube cooking channels lately. I can recommend Gita's Kitchen. Production value is not so great but everything else is good. Representative video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOisVgSBUgc

# ¿ Mar 12, 2019 17:01

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

ProSlayer posted:

What I'm struggling with now is understanding how each spice contributes to a dish, and why some recipes of the same food have more of one spice or different spices versus another.

For example, here are two recipes of a similar dish: potato curry.

You're going to have a lot of difficulty figuring out why two recipes for the same food use different spices if you pick "potato curry," because potato curry is not a food. "Curry" is a catchall word we use in English to describe basically any liquidy Indian food. Notice that in addition to having different spices, those two recipes have entirely different ingredients. One has tomatoes and no peas, the other has peas and no tomatoes. One has yogurt, the other doesn't. One has cilantro, another doesn't. You're comparing apples and oranges.

Look up actual recipes for actual food and you'll typically find less variation between recipes. Right now you're basically looking up recipes for "potato soup" and wondering why they're different. They're different because "potato soup" means effectively nothing.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2019 01:41

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

empty sea posted:

I've been eating Indian recently and as I've branched out from tikka marsala and korma, I've found out that lamb achari is loving amazing. I live near a international market where I can easily get lamb or goat, but would I just have to look for pickling spices?

Nope - "pickling spices," despite its generic name, is actually a parochial term for the spice mix which will make generic European style pickles, which are tasty but not exactly any version of an Indian pickle. If you want to make lamb achari I would look for a recipe for lamb achari and buy the things the recipe lists.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2019 17:10

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

If your parents are not babies, there's nothing "scary" except spicy stuff and pickles. Just feed them whatever. Samosas are good.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2019 15:08

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

Harry Potter on Ice posted:

In some parts of the US black pepper is too spicy ^^

Right, that's why I explicitly marked "spicy stuff" as one of the only two relevant categories that one might worry about. The stereotype about Indian food is that it's all spicy, but that's complete poppycock, and so Kanine should be fine with any Indian food that doesn't fall into the two categories I listed: spicy or pickles. Basically everything else should be fine, and there are zillions of dishes that fall into "everything else."

# ¿ Aug 16, 2019 16:50

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

Vermicelli is used to make vermicelli upma, and Indian Chinese food uses noodles in dishes like hakka noodles and chow mein. Aside from that I don't think there are a lot of Indian noodle recipes.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2019 02:35

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

I've never seen it here. It exists - you can buy it at fancy grocery stores for instance - but it's not a food many people eat, as far as I can tell. The only popular cheese is paneer.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2019 16:29

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

This whole "what is a curry leaf" thing reminds me that I've kind of wanted to make a new OP for an Indian food thread for a while. The current one isn't too old but it's a little under-detailed (no information on curry leaves, for instance!) and no joke my biggest pet peeve is that the thread title is "The Indian/Curry Thread" which is basically like having the "Korean/Sushi thread" or something, and also it plays up the stereotype that all Indian food is spicy, which I think is kind of a pain in the rear end because it fucks with people's expectations. Plus now that I live in India I've run into some foods I hadn't really eaten or even heard of before, like all sorts of soya stuff and papad mangodi ki sabzi so it'd be cool to highlight some of that in the OP. But, a new OP would mean we lose all the pages in this one. Any thoughts?

# ¿ Oct 4, 2019 05:44

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

Indian cooking thread, definitely. I don't even think a curry thread makes sense - better just to have a stew thread. "Curry" is perhaps the least helpful culinary word.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2019 07:55

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

silvergoose posted:

We're out of coriander powder gently caress

Time to go buy some replacement big bags of spices.

While you're at it, buy a spice grinder and whole coriander seeds. It's night and day!

# ¿ Oct 4, 2019 15:20

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

I use a coffee grinder for spice grinding, although it's one that was never used for coffee. Dunno if one that was used for coffee before would have any off flavors.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2019 15:26

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# ¿ Apr 30, 2024 14:47

TychoCelchuuu: Jan 2, 2012; This space for Rent.

Okay I stayed up late and made a new thread. No more silly "all Indian food is spicy curry" thread title! So, please go post in that thread instead.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2019 18:52

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Goons with Spoons > No Such Thing as Too Hot: The Indian/Curry Thread