The 30-Minute Curry Every UK Home Cook Should Know
Freundl OluwoleYou do not need 14 spices to make a good curry. You need one well-balanced curry powder, an onion, garlic, ginger, and a tin of something.
This is the curry that pays back the price of a £2.99 jar of Costack Curry Powder in one dinner.
The recipe
Serves 4. Time: 30 minutes.
- 1 tbsp vegetable oil
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 4 garlic cloves, grated
- 2 tsp grated ginger (or Costack Ginger Pure Ground)
- 2 tbsp Costack Curry Powder
- 1 tin chopped tomatoes
- 1 tin coconut milk
- 600g chicken thighs (or prawns or chickpeas)
- Salt to taste
- Coriander to finish
Method
- Onion in oil. 6 minutes on medium until golden. Patience here.
- Garlic + ginger. 1 minute.
- Curry powder. 30 seconds. Smell the difference. This is the bloom.
- Tomatoes in. Stir, scrape the pan, 3 minutes.
- Coconut milk. Stir. Add chicken (or chickpeas). Salt.
- Simmer 18-20 minutes. Lid off the last 5.
- Coriander on top. Done.
Make it 4 different curries
Same base, swap the protein:
- Chicken: browning thighs first deepens the flavour
- Prawns: added in the last 4 minutes only
- Chickpeas + spinach: vegan, ready in 18 minutes
- Lamb: mince version, brown first, then base
Costack Curry Powder is balanced for general curry use, not heat-forward. If you want fire, add 1 tsp Costack Cameroon Pepper with the curry powder.
Serving
- Basmati rice cooked with cardamom and bay
- Or naan from the supermarket warmed in foil
- Mango chutney on the side
- A spoon of yoghurt to cool
Why supermarket curries do not match this
Pre-made supermarket curry sauces are loaded with sugar and emulsifiers. They taste fine for the first bite. By the third bite they taste flat. Home-made with proper curry powder layers complexity that a jar cannot fake.
