It’s not too easy to define what exactly curry is as it mainly refers to the use of a paste, powder, or leaves called curry to make a sauce or gravy. When this sauce is added to some preparations, the resulting dish is called a curry. The word “curry” means sauce in Tamil (the language spoken in Southern India).
Curry is part of the culinary tradition of South Asian countries, particularly India and Thailand. It is essentially a dish made up of a thick sauce cooked with meat, vegetables, or tofu seasoned with a mixture of spices.
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Different varieties of curry
Curries are frequently served over white or brown rice to balance the heavily spiced sauce with the rice’s mild flavor. Curries are also a key ingredient to make dishes like this one https://riceselect.com/recipe/curry-risotto-baked-salmon, where curry is the main flavor in a delicious risotto.
Most Indian and Thai curries comprise a blend of garlic, onion, and ginger flavored with a dense spices mixture. It includes toasted and ground cinnamon, cardamom, coriander, cloves, fennel seed, cumin, mustard seed, fenugreek, black cayenne, red cayenne, turmeric, pepper, curry leaves, nutmeg, poppy seeds, mace, star anise, bay leaves, and chili.
These spices are combined with water or vinegar to form a paste that is added to different dishes to make traditional curry preparations.
The mixture of spices changes from region to region and defines the type of curry.
There are thousands and thousands of curry around the world. All of them are based on traditional Indian and Thai recipes.
The varieties of curries are recognizable according to the curry paste used. The main curries are:
- Red curry: The base of this type includes hot red chili peppers in the spices mixture. Tomatoes are added to intensify color and taste.
- Yellow curry: It includes traditional spices, hot yellow peppers, galangal, and turmeric to heighten color.
- Green curry: Besides the classic spices, it contains hot green pepper along with fresh coriander, makrut lime leaf and peel, basil, and lemongrass.
- Massaman: It is a thick sweet sauce made of classic spices with peanuts and tamarind.
- Penang: It resembles red curry, but it is less spicy. It contains a combination of sweet and hot red peppers and turmeric.
Try curry at home
Preparing authentic curry is complicated with all the traditional spices outside India and Thailand. Therefore, modern curry pastes or powders are commercialized to make them accessible to everyone.
The curry paste and powder are a mixture of dried spices such as cumin, turmeric, coriander, black pepper, and ground ginger. The correct way to replicate traditional curry preparations is to pan-frying curry paste and powder in oil. This allows infusing the oil that is then used to flavor the rest of the ingredients.
You can prepare red, green, and yellow curry using curry powder and combine it with chicken, fish, pork, lamb, beef, tofu, or vegetables to create delicious curries.
The most popular preparations of curry in India and Thailand are fish curries and vegetable curry.
Try this recipe at home and surprise your guests with a mouthwatering curry preparation:
Vegetables in red curry
Ingredients:
- 2 tablespoons of olive oil.
- 1 chopped yellow onion.
- 4 minced cloves of garlic.
- 1 tablespoon of grated fresh ginger.
- 1 sliced red bell pepper.
- 1 sliced yellow bell pepper.
- 2 carrots cut into small rounds.
- 1 cup broccoli florets.
- 1 cup of cauliflower florets.
- 2 tablespoons of red curry paste.
- 1 can of full-fat coconut milk.
- 1/2 cup of water.
- 2 cups of thinly sliced kale.
- 2 diced Roma tomatoes.
- 2 teaspoons of pure maple syrup.
- 1 tablespoon of fresh lime juice.
- 1 tablespoon of soy sauce.
- 4 cups of cooked white.
- Chopped fresh basil for garnish.
Preparation:
- In a skillet, pour olive oil and heat at medium temperature.
- Add onion, garlic, and ginger. Sauté for 1 minute.
- Incorporate red and yellow bell peppers, carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower florets. Stir very well and continue cooking for 5 more minutes.
- Add red curry paste, full-fat coconut milk, and water. Mix until the curry paste dissolves.
- Incorporate the kale, reduce the heat, and simmer for 10 minutes.
- Add chopped tomatoes, pure maple syrup, fresh lime juice, and soy sauce.
- Turn off the heat and let the sauce rest for 5 minutes.
- Serve with the cooked rice and chopped basil at the top.
