The chef Meherwan Irani is a prolific chef-restaurateur (and the founder of his own small-batch spice shop, Spicewalla), but at home, he cooks just like everyone else. He loves making freezer-friendly, big-batch recipes like this aromatic coconut-milk curry, which he repurposes in a variety of easy dinners throughout the week. This recipe makes about six cups curry, which is enough to make one batch each of Irani’s Yellow Curry Chicken With Vegetables, Fish Curry, and Butternut Squash and Green Bean Stew (each recipe uses two cups). Irani suggests freezing the curry in two-cup portions so you can easily defrost only what you need.
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What you’ll need
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Food Processor
$63 At Amazon
Dutch Oven
$133 $80 At Amazon
Reusable Storage Bags
$48 At Amazon
Microplane Grater
$18 At Amazon
Recipe information
Yield
Makes about 6 cups
Ingredients
1
10
6
2
6–8
1
2
2
1
2
2
Preparation
Step 1
Pulse ginger and garlic in a food processor, adding a few drops of oil if needed to help blend smoothly, until a coarse paste forms. (Alternatively, you can finely grate ginger and garlic with a Microplane.)
Step 2
Heat oil in a medium Dutch oven or other heavy pot over medium-high. Add a few mustard seeds to the pot. When seeds start to wiggle and pop, reduce heat to medium and add curry leaves (if using), asafetida (if using), and remaining mustard seeds. Cover pot and cook spices, swirling, until mustard seeds start popping more gradually, about 30 seconds. Uncover pot and return heat to medium-high. Add ginger-and-garlic paste and cook, stirring constantly, until beginning to brown, about 1 minute. Add red onions and a big pinch of salt and cook, stirring often and reducing heat if needed to prevent burning, until onions are golden brown and jammy, 10–12 minutes.
Step 3
Stir in turmeric, then tomatoes and bring to a simmer. Reduce heat to medium and cook, stirring often, until tomatoes are glossy and darkened in color and oil starts to separate around edges of pot, 7–9 minutes.
Step 4
Add coconut milk and broth and stir to combine; season with salt. Bring curry to a simmer, then reduce heat to medium-low. Cover and cook another 10 minutes, stirring every couple of minutes to prevent sticking and burning. Taste curry and season with more salt if needed.
Do Ahead: Curry can be made 5 days ahead. Let cool, then transfer to an airtight container and chill, or freeze up to 3 months. If frozen, thaw in the refrigerator before using.
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Reviews (53)
Back to TopOur whole family was disappointed. I should have read the reviews more carefully. Despite all of the spices and asafoetida and the garlic and ginger this curry was just bland and boring and far too tomato forward in its flavour. Now, I should qualify my opinion, we live right next to Surrey BC, with one of the largest Punjabi Sikh diaspora in the world. We are used to eating full bodied curries. Why would I even attempt to make a curry on my own? Because we all love curries and we don’t always want to go out to eat. I will continue to search for an authentic and deeply flavoured recipe. I might try this again with the suggestions in mind: reduce the amount of tomatoes and lose or reduce the chicken stock. I would also be inclined to double the garlic/ginger paste, add garam masala and some cardamom and double the other spices.
Maureen
Delta, Canada
7/5/2024
I made an account on this website just so that I could rant about how awful this recipe is. This is a CURRY recipe with TWO SPICES. This reads like the most boring recipe from the whitest mommy blogger recipe site. Hell, I've used some of those recipes and had them turn out way better than this one. The people who are raving about how great this recipe is must either be brand new cooks or have just lived in the midwest their whole life and eaten only jello salads. This is a absolute waste of time and money and I am really disappointed that Bon Appetit thought this is worth publishing under their name.
I hate this recipe
5/6/2024
what is this recipe? complete waste of my time, effort, and money. it turns out so watery and bland, its like a boring coconut curry soup. why are the options food processor or microplaner? the more i think about this recipe the angrier i become
Anonymous
los angeles, ca
4/25/2023
Absolutely delicious. Deeply satisfying and surprisingly quick. About the same time as making Japanese Curry, but fresher and not as heavy.
Anonymous
Philadelphia
1/24/2023
I cut the tomato and broth quantities in half because I wanted it thicker and I'm not supposed to be eating tomatoes at all. /;) This was perfect for my main purpose, which was to have something delicious to add to a light pantry soup made with packaged broth and leftover chicken. It gives a very simple, even boring, dish some zip and wonderful flavor. All told, about 10 minutes prep time. Also great stirred into a lentil soup!
beejay
California
1/22/2022
Like many others, I found this sauce to be too thin, too tomato-y and a bit bland, and I did use the curry leaves and asafetida. I would suggest leaving out the chicken broth and using half the crushed tomatoes. I added a couple tablespoons of Indian curry paste and a couple teaspoons of garam masala which helped amp up the flavors. This is a good recipe to start from and once you get it where you like it, it’s invaluable as a go-to sauce for chicken, fish and shrimp. Serve with jasmine rice and a veg for a complete meal.
Patrice
12/16/2021
THIS is the kind of recipe I get excited about: 1) batchable for weeknight meals, 2) full of flavor, 2) no capsaicin, so I can feed it to the littles and adjust the heat at serving for the grownups. After trying this last night with both chicken and fish (cooked separately), this will become a weeknight staple. I didn't have curry leaves or asafetida, which turned out fine, but I wouldn't try this if your mustard seeds or tumeric are dull or stale (order those good, good Spicewalla spices!). Also, instead of chicken broth, I just used a scoop of Minor's chicken base.
Kate Z
NJ
10/15/2021