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How to Curry Chicken, Mutton, Etc
For every pound of meat cut 2 or 3 small onions and fry in a chatty or stew pan with a little butter or ghee (buffalo butter) until half brown, then add 2 tablespoonfuls of Sun Brand Curry Powder, and make it proper brown, after which add the meat (which should be well boiled) with little salt. Stir all well together and stew for 20 minutes. A little Sun Brand Chutney added will improve the dish. And so say we, all of us!
An Anglo-Indian camp curry built on commercial curry powder, written to be cooked over a fire with pre-boiled meat. The whole dish hinges on one step: browning the powder in the fat before the meat goes in.
- Bloom the powder properly"Make it proper brown" means frying the curry powder in the hot fat for a minute or two until it darkens and smells toasted rather than dusty. Keep it moving over moderate heat; scorched turmeric and chilli turn bitter and cannot be rescued.
- ChattyA chatty (from the Tamil/Hindi chatti) is a round-bellied earthenware cooking pot. Any heavy saucepan or a small Dutch oven does the same job.
- GheeThe text glosses it as buffalo butter; ghee is clarified butter, sold in jars in most supermarkets now. It matters here because its high smoke point lets you brown the spice without burning milk solids.
- Curry powder quantityTwo tablespoons per pound of meat is heavy by modern habit, and period commercial blends may well have been milder and more turmeric-forward than today's hot Madras powders, though the strength of any given tin is not something we can now know. Start with one tablespoon per pound if your blend is assertive.
- "Well boiled" meatThe recipe assumes the meat has already been simmered until tender elsewhere, which is why the stew is only 20 minutes. Starting with raw mutton or stewing beef, you need an hour and a half to two hours of gentle simmering with added liquid; raw chicken thighs need about 25 to 30 minutes.
- LiquidNo water or stock is specified, which works only if the boiled meat brings some of its cooking liquor with it. Add a cup of that liquor or stock so the 20-minute stew has something to reduce into a sauce.
- YieldScaled per pound of meat: one pound serves two, with rice.