Got Questions About Curry? We’ve Got Answers
“Hearst Magazines and Verizon Media may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below.”
You’ve probably seen the word curry all around you—on the menu in restaurants or while you’re browsing the spice aisle. You may have tried it while dining out and noticed how diverse the dishes can be in color, flavor and style. And it may have you thinking about what exactly curry is and how you can cook it. We spoke to some experts to get some answers.
What is curry? It seems like a word people use for a lot of different dishes.
“Curry literally means any dish with sauce or gravy for Southeast Asian cuisine,” Sonny Solomon, owner of Veeray da Dhaba, an Indian restaurant in New York, said. “Simply meaning it’s not dry, but [it's] saucy.”
Curry also refers to the dish, the ingredient (more on that soon!), and the cooking style. “Curry means something different in various regions of India, Thailand, China, Japan, and throughout Asia and South America,” Lizzy Briskin said, a chef and recipe developer for spice subscription service RawSpiceBar. “It’s almost become a blanket term for a highly seasoned dish with any kind of sauce and usually a protein.”
What are the origins of curry?
“The word 'curry' is actually a made-up British word that was first used during Indian colonization,” Briskin said. “It’s an Anglicized version of the Tamil word for sauce, kari.”
What is curry powder?
It’s a spice mixture and it varies greatly from culture to culture, from cuisine to cuisine, and even from kitchen to kitchen. “Southeast Asian cuisine uses the same staple ingredients like cumin powder, turmeric, coriander powder, and red chili powder,” Solomon said. “Curry powder is a blend of these staple spices and varies according to each region or country.”
Blends can also include garlic, ginger, mustard, and other spices. “Cooks in India generally don’t use pre-mixed blends to build their ‘curry’ sauces,” Briskin said. “Instead, they’ll take a pinch from a dozen different sauce containers to flavor their dish without measuring just by taste. There are dozens of different curry powder blends to represent local flavors. Some are made with more spice, others more herbal or warming flavors.”
What are the different types of curry powder?
As mentioned, the blends of curry powder can differ greatly between cultures and regions. “There are numerous curry powders in India,” Solomon said. “It's a preference of taste, flavor, and the style of cooking that differentiates one curry powder from another.”
Some blends you might see in the grocery store aisles in the U.S. could be madras, garam masala, chaat masala, vadouvan, and regional curry powders like Thai, Japanese, Jamaican, and more. “The word ‘masala’ means a mixture, so it represents any number of spices combined into a spice blend,” Briskin explained.
What’s the difference between curry powder and curry paste?
It comes down to how it’s made. A powder will be a dry blend, while a paste could be made with fresh ingredients or mixed with oil.
How can I use curry powder?
It’s a spice blend, so you can get creative! “Curry powder can be used to flavor sauces, soups, stews, protein, vegetables, or really any savory dish,” Briskin said. “You can use it just like any spice blend to add warming, spicy, or savory flavors to a meal.” She recommends blooming (the fancy word for heating something up to release its flavors) the spices in ghee or oil and/or rehydrating them in coconut milk or broth while cooking with curry powder.
You Might Also Like
