Recipe: Easy Indian Curry for Any Meat

Easy Indian Curry for Any Meat: Recipe with Pictures

Easy Indian Curry with turkey sausage, beef and chicken, served with Basmati Rice (colored with turmeric), grapes, and Crisp Rosemary Potatoes.

This recipe is based on the Smothered Lamb (or pork or beef) recipe in Madhur Jaffrey's cookbook entitled Quick and Easy Indian Cooking, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1996. It's our staple Indian recipe. From the day I first made it (December, 2000), it became my favorite Indian recipe, largely because the time/taste tradeoff is so great.

What we quickly learned is that it's good with any meat -- beef, chicken, or even chicken/turkey sausage. I imagine it would be a great sauce too with frozen meatballs. The recipe you'll see in the pictures was the day after Emily's birthday celebration -- she and Katie love fondue for their birthdays, and we are usually left with a variety of leftover, uncooked meat. So, you'll be seeing "Easy Indian Leftover Fondue-Meat Curry."

The time for cooking this -- 1 hour if you don't use beef, 2 hours otherwise.

Ingredients

Meat -- one recipe is nominally for 1 pound of meat, but if you want more sauce, double everything but the meat. We've used beef, chicken, chicken sausage, turkey sausage, kielbasa, etc.
1 small onion
1-inch piece fresh ginger, or 1 tablespoon ginger paste
1 medium-sized tomato, or half a 14-oz can whole tomatoes, drained
1 head fresh cilantro
1-2 hot green chilies
1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
2 teaspoons store-bought garam masala. You may have to go to an Indian or Middle-Eastern grocer for garam masala, although I'll be shocked if they are not stocking it in grocery stores these days.
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 cup plain yoghurt
1 tablespoon tomato paste
3/4 teaspoon salt, or to taste
3 tablespoons vegetable oil (don't scale this up when you make more -- you only need it to saute the garlic).
4 cloves garlic
Ground black peppper

The ingredients. Actually, we're missing the cilantro, because the store didn't have any, and the ginger, because I forgot to put it in the picture. You'll note, we have leftover beef, chicken and turkey kielbasa from our fondue night, and I sliced two links of Hot Italian Turkey Sausage (back right).

Directions

Cut the meat into small cubes. Chop the onion, ginger, tomatoes and cilantro finely. Either seed the chilies (if you want it less hot) or not, and slice them into thin rings. Mix together the onion, ginger, tomato, cilantro, chilies, turmeric, garam masala, cumin, yoghurt, tomato paste and salt in a bowl. If you are using beef as the meat, mix that in as well. Chop the garlic finely. Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a Dutch Oven, and add the garlic. Saute until it starts turning a medium brown. Now add the contents of the bowl, stir once or twice, and turn the heat to low. Simmer, covered, stirring every now and then.

If you are using beef, you should simmer for 2 hours. Otherwise, you'll only need to simmer for an hour. Add chicken 30 minutes before eating. If using cooked sausage (like Kielbasa), add that 15 minutes before eating. If using an uncooked sausage, I like to fry it first, drain, and then add it 15 minutes before eating.

When it's done, add lots of fresh black pepper, and serve over rice.

Mixing the ingredients. I usually go a little heavy on the yoghurt and the tomato paste. You'll note -- I've mixed the beef in there

Left -- the garlic is a nice brown, so we add the ingredients from the bowl.

Cover and simmer, stirring every now and then.

I used Italian Turkey Sausage, which wasn't cooked, so about 40 minutes before it was time, I fried it so it was a nice brown. I added the chicken 30 minutes before eating time, and the sausages 15 minutes before eating time.

It's done! The black pepper has been added, and it's time to eat!