This potato curry is very flavor forward with a plethora of spices and fresh ingredients to make a full-bodied curry!
Total Cooking Time: 1 hour
This potato curry was inspired by Kate’s recipe from her Bombay Potato pie as a part of my Showstopper Challenge from Season eight of the Great British Bake Off. This curry is packed with flavor and spices with potato acting as the protein and tomatoes creating the base of the curry sauce. While there a bit of frying required for making this recipe, I really enjoyed learning some cooking techniques I hadn’t used before. Especially using some new ingredients that I’m used to eating but not so use to cooking with.
Ingredients
Whoa boy, this recipe has a lot going on. I wasn’t expecting to use cumin seeds, mustard seeds, and onion seeds. To be honest, I didn’t really know what any of that was. So, I went to my local expert on Indian ingredients: my mother. She had all those ingredients in her pantry. I guess I’m the strange one for being without them. I need to be a better Indian y’all.
Another ingredient that I wasn’t expecting to use was fresh ginger root. I normally use ground ginger, but fresh ginger was something new for me. Everything else was spices on top of spices on top of spices. And I am here for it.
Process
01
Prepping the Potatoes
Potatoes are an interesting ingredient. They do not cook quickly and typically require some sort of pre-cooking or preparing to work well in a recipe. For this recipe, I ended up peeling, dicing, and boiling the potatoes. I wanted them to be fully cooked and tender since they’ll join the recipe closer to the end. This is really their main chance to cook.
02
Let’s Get Spicy
In a large frying pan, it’s time to start cooking. First, I add in the oil and onions. I wanted to get the onions to be golden brown, so I chose to sweat the onions over low heat to make then tender first before getting them to that golden brown consistency.
The I added in all the seeds and the pan went crackle pop! [add more] Then, since the seeds were fully ready it was time to add in all the spices. And I mean all the spices. We got garlic, ginger, cumin powder, curry powder, garam masala, chili powder, coriander, turmeric, salt, and black pepper.
03
Bringing Everything Together
The last step is to crush the tomatoes into the spices. This is the base of our curry so keep that in mind for how smooth you want to make the curry. I like it a little smoother rather than chunky but if it’s going into a pie crust (like mine will) it might be good to have very little liquid.
Then it’s time to stir in the potatoes!! I let the whole curry simmer for about a minute before removing it from the heat. The simmer was more for the potatoes to allow them to open up and take in all of the spices. After letting it cool for a bit, the curry is ready to enjoy!!
Reflections
I love how this curry came out! It was perfect to ladle over a bed of rice that would absorb all the sauce from the curry. The only problem was I made this to go into a pie and not over a bed of rice.
It did end up have a bit too much liquid for the pie I was making and that was mainly due to the tomatoes. The original recipe called for 3 tomatoes, and I decided to use four. Maybe that was a mistake. Either way, this curry was delicious and made a huge amount!
Lessons
What does it mean to Sweat Onions?
Sweating the onions typically means cooking the onions over a low heat while covered to keep in the moisture. The moisture from the onions is what is referred to as “sweating”. This process will do a few things for the onions. One, it will allow them to become tender and soft in texture. This comes from the moisture being trapped inside the process.
This process will also increase the sweetness of the onion and reduce the sulfur content that is naturally in the onion. The reduced sulfur will give the onions a milder taste. This technique is typically used as a preliminary step in a longer cooking method or dish.
recipe
Potato Curry
Ingredients
- 6 Potatoes peeled and diced
- 2 Tbsp Sunflower Oil
- 2 Medium to Large Onions finely chopped
- 3 Large Garlic Cloves finely chopped
- 3 Tbsp Grated Ginger
- 1 Tsp Cumin Seeds
- 2 Tsp Brown Mustard Seeds
- 2 Tbsp Ground Cumin
- 2 Tsp Garam Masala or to taste
- 1 Tbsp Chili Powder or to taste
- 1 Tsp Coriander
- 2 Tsp Turmeric
- 1 Tsp Salt or to taste
- 1 Tsp Black Pepper or to taste
- 4 Large Tomatoes diced
Instructions
- Place the potatoes in a large pan. Cover with cold water and bring to a boil over high heat. Cook for about 10 minutes or until potatoes are just tender. Drain thoroughly.
- Heat the oil in a large frying pan. Add the onions and cook over low heat until very soft. Increase the heat and cook the onions until golden brown.
- Add mustard and cumin seeds and cook for a few minutes until they start to make popping sounds.
- Stir in the garlic, ginger, cumin powder, garam masala, chili powder, coriander, turmeric, salt, and black pepper.
- Add in tomatoes and stir, letting the liquid from the tomatoes seep into the curry
- Cook over a medium to low heat until the mixture becomes thick. Season to taste and then stir in the potatoes. Simmer for 1 minute and then remove from the heat and leave to cool.
- Enjoy!!