All,

When recipes refer to browning onions at the beginning of the cooking process for curries, I'm never sure how brown to go? I tend to fry my onions on a very low heat for approx 20 mins until they are a very pale brown or yellow.

I am nervous about burning the onions, but I have recently read that onions should be fried to dark brown to ensure your curry has a robust flavour and colour.

Can anyone advise how brown I should go and why??

Many thanks

James.

I think this may vary depending on what part of India you are in.

In the north, the onion is cooked more than in the south, but north Indians dishes tend to be more robust, as you put it.

When we cook onions, we want to drive off the water, but extract the sulphur containing flavour compounds; these react with other compounds in the other ingredients to produce even more flavour chemicals. Same with garlic.

The trick is to heat the onions so that water is driven off but not let them brown. Apart from the sulphur compounds, much of the onion is water (about 87%) and carbohydrate, it is the latter that can burn.

Medium heat is essential, but plenty of oil/fat is another. The onion should be covered by the oil, this stops the onion from burning, too. So the onion must be chopped quite finely, about 3mm dice, and added to hot oil immediately, to reduce the likelyhood of acids forming. At the end of cooking, no water should be left in the oil.

In a long experiment, I heated diced onions in oil, until all the water was driven off. This took over an hour, and the only bits of onion that were burnt were above the oil!! Water loss was found to be linear with time, I weighed them every two minutes. Temperature was 100?C at the start, rising to 140?C just before the end.

Usually garlic, ginger and chillies are added as well, at the start of cooking a dish. These should be added after the onion, as they contain less water, and it is easier to drive it off. No water should remain at the end of frying.

I normally start them off on a medium?high heat with plenty of oil as Lapis has mentioned. As soon as I notice the ginger starting to stick to the bottom of the pan I reduce the heat to medium?low and cook for about 10 minutes stirring often. Then I reduce the heat down to the lowest setting and cook them for about 15?20 minutes until all the mixture is a dark(ish) brown.

I was always told that the browning/caramelising of the onions was essential when cooking an Indian curry. Hence the fact I spend a long time on the onions. I also add a few pinches of salt to the onions whilst they're cooking as I was told this speeds up the process of removing the water.

My only problem with adding chillies at the start is sometimes they let of fumes and everyone in the house has to evacuate because they can't stop coughing...I forget how many times I have got into trouble for that. People must think there's a house fire or something. Is there anything you can do to stop this, Lapis or anyone?

Most north Indian curries do require browning of the onions well. Sometimes, deep brown fried onions are also added as a garnish.

Thanks for this. Like James, I too have been puzzled by this, for some time now.

(By the way, James, in response to a query of yours, my books are all rather academic, I'm afraid, unless you're interested in things like English Phonetics and Phonology: I tried to respond to your query, but ran into a spam blocker).

Phil

are you talking fresh chillies or dried. I was talking fresh.

Salt won't do anything, except slow down the browning process. The water is given off as steam, or should be, I can't emphasise the point about the right heat, there should be no water in the pan at any time during the frying process. This is because, at the end of onion frying (and g,g &c) spices and/or raw meat are usually added. Both need a waterless medium in which to be cooked properly.

I'm talking about fresh chillies. I normally add whole dried chillies before the onions, a few seconds after the whole garam masala (if using). Chilli powder I add at the same time as all the other powdered spices -- after the onions are browned. Sometimes I add fresh chillies with the onions, depending on what I am making, sometimes I just add them at the same time as the tomatoes.

How Brown ? It depends on which recipe and how I want the end results but I tend to make mine very brown either on a medium/hot heat stiring continuously to stop them catching or an low heat for more like an hour or so... this creates more of a brown "gloop" if taken far enough !

Steve

i dont want to come across as been rude but why do really hot peppers make your penis or vagina burn after eating them. i am not talking about touching yourself by mistake when you have been cutting them up. a few nights back a mate of mine got some dorset naga peppers from tesco and he cooked up a curry using 4 whole pods. i managed to get it down eventually but about an hour later i went to the bathroom to urinate and the end of my penis felt like it was literaly on fire. this lasted for about 20 mins before it stopped. i swore then i would never eat another on of those dam peppers. is this safe please?

lee

Lee, presuming you don't have any other problem that needs medical attention, it maybe you're hypersensitive to the chemicals in chilli, it might just be that Narga chillies are much more powerful than normal and you are now noticing the affect more, or maybe you have inadvertanly come into contact with the chemicals from a chopping board, knife etc...

Steve

Reminds us all to wash our hands both before and after going to the loo after chopping chillies.

The Dorset Naga is lethal. It is an extra hot relative of the Scotch Bonnet chilli. On SHU tests is has recorded a massive level of up to 1.6 million SHU.

Afraid not for me!

I agree with Steve, as the heat compounds in chilli are fat soluble, they need to be absorbed by the gut, and an hour doesn't seem quite long enough for the curry to pass through the stomach to the duodenum, and beyond, although chillies are known to cause 'intestinal rush'. My money would be as Steve describes, and we've all been there, (chilli burn, I mean, not Steve!)

LOL@Lee. I eat Dorset naga peppers quite often -- even in certain Indian curries -- and they do have a tendency to burn when they are coming out...read into that what you want. I'm not a fan of capsicum chinense in Indiad food because I don't think it belongs in Indian food, but more so in certain Mexican and Caribbean dishes. However, to me the Dorset naga tastes just fine in certain Indian curries, it reminds me of some bangladeshi dishes I have eaten in the past. I've tried Naga Morich and Bhut and Bih Jolokia peppers, and while they have a nice taste in their own way, they don't taste as nice as the Dorset naga in my opinion. I wouldn't use either of the last two in Indian food because of their flavour.

I used to leave the seeds in all chillies when I used them, but nowadays I have a tendency to remove them, especially with certain peppers -- namely the super hot like naga, jolokia, fatalii etc. Because the body doesn't digest seeds and given that chilli seeds are one of the hottest parts of the pod, I remove them as I believe them to be an irritant. I have been told that the hottest part of any chilli is the white membrane that attaches the seeds to the pod. But when you look inside many of the super hot pods they only contain a few seeds -- some people believe that the Trinidad 7pot is so hot because it has a lot of that membrane inside it.

Dorset naga peppers do have a tendency to burn your anus and your penis/vagina, but in my experience it tends to be more of one or the other, and on occasions both. Certain habanero peppers I have eaten tended to burn both, while certain peppers had a tendency to burn either the urine of the faeces more, and in my opinion, the Dorsets have a tendency to burn the urine more. Without sounding weird, it's a sensation I have gotten used to since eating the Dorset naga peppers and it really doesnt bother me much at all. Then again, maybe 4 peppers is a bit stupid and OTT. I would aim for one pepper, deseeded for flavour more than anything, two at a push.

As people have already pointed out, these peppers are a lot hotter than the average 'green finger chilli' and they need to be treated with respect and care. In my opinion four is too much. I've seen a recipe for chicken naga that calls for 16 dorset naga peppers, and, well, that is just stupid!

I'll tell you what.. going back several years ago when I first discovered this site looking for a naan bread recipe I never ever expected to be reading this one day !

Steve

I was making a tomato sauce last night for a pizza topping (haven't been shopping so it was a see what you can come up with meal..)

Here are the onions in the pan raw onions

This is them nicely browned up Onions almost ready

and here they are finished browning and now with some spices going in onions adding spices

Steve

All,

Many thanks for your explanations and tips, particularly Lee's 'hot tips'!!

James.

hello Everyone,

Sorry, I have been super-busy and have not visited the Boards for a few days, but cannot resist putting my two cents' worth in.

I saw the picture of browned onions for a pizza sauce just above. I would never brown onions like this for an Italian or French dish. (Though of course if that is what you like it is fine.) Normally in these cooking styles onions are cooked gently until soft or transparent. But I do brown onions like that for Indian dishes - perhaps even a bit more. I learned Indian cooking originally from Madhur Jaffrey's 'Invitation to Indian Cooking' and for several dishes she says 'cook onions until brown but not burned'. I didn't realise then that this was northern Indian cooking (as Mamta has said above) but it certainly trained me to brown onions thoroughly and carefully when necessary, and to understand that they can be a big flavour component.

I now make a lamb biriani for which the recipe came from somewhere a bit odd (an Australian Womens Weekly cookbook - I pick up recipes everywhere). It is delicious but the flavour of the lamb really depends on having properly browned onions in the mixture the lamb cooks in the first time, which they haven't made clear in the recipe.

Heather, you are not alone! I have the Australian Women's Weekly Chinese Cookbook. It is one of the clearest written, least pretentious and well illustrated cookery books I have.

I have an Australian cook book about cakes, preserves and sweets. It is very old, belonged to my father. It is very nice too. I must dig it out, I haven't made anything from it for years!