01Build the Base, Then Decide
A curry from a jar is fine. A curry from a packet of spices you already own is better, faster than you think, and yours to bend in any direction. The logic is simple: bloom your spices in fat, add aromatics, add something wet, let it reduce. Twenty minutes from cold pan to bowl.
Start with a neutral oil — sunflower, vegetable — over medium-high heat. Cumin seeds go in first, about a teaspoon, and they should sizzle immediately. Give them thirty seconds, until they darken slightly and the kitchen smells like a restaurant. Then a finely diced onion. Don't rush this part: five to six minutes, stirring occasionally, until it's genuinely golden at the edges. That colour is flavour, and it's also what keeps the finished curry from tasting raw and flat.
Grate in three cloves of garlic and a thumb of fresh ginger — or use a teaspoon each of garlic paste and ginger paste from a jar, because those jars exist and they work. Stir for sixty seconds. Then the dry spices: a teaspoon each of ground coriander and ground cumin, half a teaspoon of turmeric, half a teaspoon of chilli flakes or a full teaspoon of mild chilli powder, depending on your tolerance. Stir everything together and cook for another minute, pressing the paste against the pan. If it threatens to catch, add a splash of water.
Now tinned tomatoes — a standard 400g tin, whole or chopped, roughly crushed with the back of a spoon. Turn the heat up briefly to get a good simmer going, then hold it there for eight to ten minutes. You're not just heating the tomatoes; you're cooking them down until the oil begins to separate at the edges of the pan and the sauce looks glossy rather than watery. That separation — the fat pooling slightly at the sides — is the visual cue that your base is cooked. It's called bhunao in traditional technique: frying the masala until it's genuinely done.
Give them thirty seconds, until they darken slightly and the kitchen smells like a restaurant.
| Figure | What it's for |
|---|---|
| 400g | standard tin of tomatoes; the wet base for this curry |
| 5–6 minutes | minimum time to properly golden an onion |
| 8–10 minutes | simmer time to reduce tomatoes and achieve oil separation |
| 20 minutes | total time from cold pan to finished dish |
02Send It in Any Direction
From here the curry is yours. Chickpeas from a tin, drained and rinsed, go straight in and need only five minutes to warm through and take on the sauce. Diced chicken thigh — boneless, skinless — goes in with the tomatoes from the start and will be cooked through by the time the base is ready. Raw prawns need three minutes at the end, nothing more. Paneer, cubed and crisped in a separate dry pan first, stirs in at the finish. Cauliflower florets can go in with the tomatoes; spinach, a couple of big handfuls, wilts in right at the end.
Finish with a small pour of water or stock if the sauce looks too tight — you want it to coat, not clump. Taste for salt. A pinch of garam masala stirred in off the heat rounds everything out without muddying the spices you've already built. A squeeze of lemon is useful if it tastes flat.
Rice, flatbread, or nothing — the base works for all three. If you want it creamy, a few tablespoons of plain yoghurt stirred in off the heat (off the heat, so it doesn't split) will do it. A tin of coconut milk, added instead of the water, takes the whole thing in a different direction entirely.
The point of learning this base is that you stop needing a recipe. You know the sequence — fat, whole spice, onion, aromatics, dry spice, wet ingredient, reduce — and the rest is just what's in the cupboard.