How To Make Your Own Curry Powder
Curry powder is a mix of spices that have been heated and then ground into a powder. You use curry powder, instead of the individual spices, when you are cooking.
There’s a Curry Focus article describing curry powder here and there’s also a recipe for making your own curry powder here.
Not many recipes tell you how to use curry powder; instead they tell you to add the spices when cooking. But there are recipes that do use curry powder and here’s a good one for Hot Lamb Curry.
The method of making your own curry powder is fairly standard in that you heat individual spices and then grind them into a powder. The recipes are very easy to follow. You can experiment with the spices that you use so that you can find the curry powder flavor that works well for you.
Some purists say that you should always use fresh spices when making a curry and that you should never use curry powder.
But we can see nothing wrong with using curry powder, whether you’ve made it yourself or bought it from a store or a supermarket.
I usually add fresh spices to my curries but sometimes I use curry powder, when I’m in a hurry.
If you find a recipe that you want to try, you can substitute curry powder for the spices if you want. Simply add the curry powder early on in the recipe to make sure that the spices are absorbed into the food. I’ve seen advice that you sprinkle curry powder onto a meal, as if it was salt – in my opinion, this is bad advice and should be ignored.
You should not be tempted to make a really big batch of curry powder unless you’re going to use the powder soon because all spices go stale, no matter how carefully you store them. You can read an article about looking after your spices in the blog that is titled “Keeping Your Indian Curry Spices Fresh”.
Why not try making your own curry powder instead of buying it from a store or supermarket? Your curry powder will have no preservatives, will be fresher and may taste better.
