All,

I have just tried a Madhur Jaffrey recipe for the first time (Rogan Josh). It used very simple spices that we are all familiar with, however it tasted very different to all my other indian recipes previously cooked. I wonder whether it was due to the what seemed crazily huge amounts of oil used in the onion browning process?

Most of her curry recipes in the book I have call for similar amounts of oil (7 to 10 tablespoons to make dish for 4-6!) Also, most of her recipes mention that the oil can be skimmed off at the end of cooking.

My questions:

1. Is it the oil quantity that can make such a difference to flavour?

2. Is it OK/healthy to use so much oil if skimming it off at the end - or does much of the oil get hidden or infused in the ingredients?

Any thoughts?

Thanks

James.

PS : It was delicious!

I always use large amounts of oil or ghee when cooking a curry. What I have learnt on this forum is that the spices release their flavours into oil. I find that the onions don't cook as well if you use too little oil - and the onion browning process is one of the most important parts of making a curry.

If there's any oil left on the surface after cooking then I spoon it off and store it in a bottle - it's great used in stir-fries :-)

Madhur Jaffrey is a great matriarch of Indian cookery in Britain and probably did more than anyone to introduce it to the British masses. However it is a common observation that she can, to say the least, be 'heavy handed' with the oil in her recipes.

Looking up her 'Rogan Josh' recipe, it does indeed call for ten tablespoons of oil! Doesn't her recommendation of then skimming it at the end show it is an excessive amount to start with, as well as simply being wasteful and creating another otherwise unnecessary procedure? I'd generally start on the principle of using a few tablespoons of oil and adding more as necessary rather than trying to take it away.

Regards your questions of health and taste, it can be of no benefit to either having a greasy curry swimming in oil however much you can skim off once the ingredients have been nearly deep fried in it. Yes the type of oil used will effect the flavour from fairly innocuous rapeseed oil to pungent mustard oil, olive oil to ghee.

Think though I have probably raised more questions than answered!

Winton

Rogan josh is very different from most other dishes. If made using Pandit (Kashmiri Hindus) recipes, it is just lamb/goat/chimaera with spices, curd and chillies. So the gravy/sauce is a mix (actually two separate layers) of fat (the rogan) and milk solids/spices. The liquid is mopped up with bread, although plain rice is also consumed with it. It is more a winter dish that a summer one, and is often coloured vivid red in the mistaken belief that rogan josh means red meat! It is a korma, so the meat is cooked over low heat, in a sealed vessel. The main spices are ground ginger and ground fennel.

The fat comes mostly from the meat, so a fatty cut is usually used. And if red sweet peppers are used as well as a few chillies, the fat is a lovely clear red liquid.

Using a large amount of oil is a personal choice and I make it not to use it. That said, it will definitely fry onions and spices better. However, if you are careful and if you fry the onions on medium heat, you can manage with far less oil quite easily. Adding a sprinkle of water now and then during the frying of onions/masala mix, will help to brown them with far less oil.

The amount you mention in Madhur's recipe, I will find very difficult to come to terms with, having health issues always at the back of my mind. But there is no doubt, more oil does make frying spices masala easier and curries taste better. That is what restaurants do, add a lot of oil. I always skim off excessive oil from meat curries, because most of it is fat released from the meat. You can always leave it in when making it for parties, because it does contain flavour.

Andrew, it is generally accepted now a days that the oil skimmed off the top of a meat/chicken curry is not good to eat health wise, it is too rich in bad fats. I know it is tasty and traditionally saved and used for making stir fries, just like oils left over in pickle jars, but pickle oil is usually a vegetable oil.

I really should start thinking more about health issues, Mamta :-) I think nothing of using 6?8 tablespoons of ghee in a curry. What I say to the people who complain about me using ghee is that they think nothing of smearing their four pieces of toast with margarine in the mornings, the amount of ghee I use in a curry (made for four people) is probably using less butter/ghee than they eat on their toast in the mornings :-)

Hi everyone,

Yes, Madhur Jaffrey does use lots of oil, specially in her earlier recipes. I have always thought that this was a reflection of Indian practice when she was learning to cook. I sort of compromise - if it is a recipe in which the browned onions are an important flavour component I will fry them in plenty of oil, then drain them on kitchen paper and remove the excess oil from the pan before moving on to the next step. This seems to work ok - I don't have loads of fat swimming on top like I used to back in the 1980s making rogan josh and her other recipes of this kind. (But yes, they were delicious.)

Heather

the flavour of the onions is an important part of the dish, so discarding the oil with onion flavour in discards the flavour, too. If you want to fry onions in less oil, and not have them brown too much (they should be golden rather than brown) then use a pan that is more upright than shallow. I have cooked onions this way for 90 minutes without them browning, which seems to need oxygen to complete the browning process. I have no idea why ;?)

Lapis - it appears to me the onions keep on going if they have moisture...steam created by the deep sides of the pan.

onions obviously in themselves have moisture but they will maintain colourless if there's moisture around them too...

that's correct, Azelia, except that after the 70 minutes of cooking, there was no water left in the onions or the oil (I measured both) and the water loss over time was linear with time (I measured that as well). From this I concluded that the onions needed oxygen to brown.

...interesting Lapis