chicken curry rice, poured thick over a rice dome
Ingredients · tap to check
- 700 g (1 1/2 lb) bone-in chicken thighs and drumsticks, or 500 g boneless thigh cut into big chunks
- 1/2 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp coarsely ground black pepper, for the chicken
- 2 Tbsp butter
- 1 large onion, cut into thick half-moons
- 2 medium potatoes, about 400 g, peeled and cut into big blunt chunks
- 2 carrots, cut into thick blunt rounds
- 4 cups (1 L) water
- 100 g curry roux, about half a standard box, broken into blocks
- 1 tsp soy sauce, optional, for depth
- hot short-grain rice, to serve
The Way
- Cut the onion into thick half-moons in one fast rocking motion. Keep them thick - thin slices vanish into the sauce, and you want them to still be there at the end.
- Peel the potato in one long unbroken ribbon if you can manage it, then cut it into big blunt chunks, roughly 4 cm. Do the carrot the same way, turning it a quarter-turn between cuts so the pieces come off blunt and wedge-shaped rather than neat.
- Pat the chicken dry and season it with the salt and pepper. If you are using boneless thigh, cut it into big thick chunks, not bite-size ones.
- Melt the butter in a heavy pot until it foams. Lay the chicken in skin side down and leave it alone for 3 to 4 minutes so it sears instead of steaming. You want a loud sizzle and edges that go deep golden, never pale. Turn it once and give it another 2 minutes.
- Tip the onion in around the chicken and let it go glassy at the edges, about 2 minutes, scraping up whatever the chicken left on the bottom.
- Add the potato and carrot chunks, knocking them into the pot in one go, then pour in the water until everything is just covered. Bring it up to a simmer.
- Skim the pale foam off the surface with a small ladle as it rises, and keep skimming for the first couple of minutes. This is the whole difference between a glossy sauce and a cloudy one.
- Simmer uncovered 20 to 25 minutes, until a knife slides through the potato with no resistance. The liquid should have dropped a little below the vegetables.
- Take the pot off the boil, down to the barest heat. Drop the roux blocks in and stir them under until they dissolve completely and the broth swirls glossy deep mahogany-amber, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the soy sauce if you want it a shade deeper. Let it thicken 5 more minutes off the boil, stirring now and then.
- Pack hot rice into a small bowl and turn it out onto a plate as a dome. Pour the curry thick over the top from a ladle held high, chicken and vegetable chunks sliding down whole.
midnight tip. three things. first, the roux goes in off the boil - a hard boil makes it clump and go grainy, so drop the heat right down and let the blocks melt slowly into the broth. second, cut the vegetables blunt and big: neat small dice dissolves over 25 minutes of simmering and you end up with sauce instead of curry. third, skim the foam early and properly, because that pale scum is what turns the finished sauce cloudy instead of glossy. and yes, boxed roux. i am not going to pretend otherwise, it is what makes this taste the way it is supposed to taste.
Questions
no curry roux blocks - can I make it from scratch?
yes, and it is easier than it sounds. melt 3 Tbsp butter, whisk in 3 Tbsp flour and cook it to a nutty tan roux, 5 minutes, then whisk in 2 Tbsp curry powder, 1 tsp garam masala and a pinch of cayenne off the heat. thin it with a ladle of the simmering broth until it is smooth, then stir it back into the pot. it comes out lighter and more fragrant than boxed roux, and slightly less thick, so give it 5 extra minutes to reduce.
can I make it ahead?
curry is genuinely better the next day - the sauce settles and the spice rounds out, so it keeps 3 days in the fridge and reheats gently with a splash of water. it does not freeze well, though. the potato goes grainy and falls apart on thawing, so if you know you are freezing it, leave the potato out and add it fresh when you reheat.
why blunt chunks instead of a neat dice?
because the vegetables sit in liquid for 25 minutes. blunt wedge-shaped pieces have less surface for their edges to soften off, so they hold their shape and you still get a whole piece of potato on your spoon at the end. a neat small dice cooks through in ten minutes and then quietly disintegrates into the sauce for the other fifteen.
my curry went lumpy and grainy - what happened?
the roux hit a boil, or it went in as a whole block and the outside gelled before the middle melted. the fix either way is the same: ladle a cup of the hot broth into a bowl, break the block into it and stir until it is a smooth slurry, then pour that back into the pot with the heat right down. and take the pot off the boil before the roux ever goes near it.
(this one was CURRY) — it finds your DMs.
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