Indian Roast Chicken Masala Gravy

This is what happens when you make an Indian style base gravy in the tin your roast chicken came out of. There is no flour in it at all: the body comes from onions cooked long enough to fall apart, which is how most Indian gravies are thickened. It is rich without being heavy and it works over rice, roast potatoes or a plate of roast chicken.

Ingredients

Makes about 600ml, enough for six

• 3 tbsp chicken fat from the tin, or ghee
• 3 onions, finely sliced about 400g
• 20g (¾oz) fresh ginger, grated
• 5 cloves garlic, grated
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 2 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• ½ tsp ground turmeric
• ½ tsp Kashmiri chilli powder mild and very red. Ordinary chilli powder works, use half as much
• 2 tbsp tomato puree
• 600ml (1 pint) hot chicken stock
• 3 tbsp full fat natural yoghurt
• 1 tsp garam masala
• 1 tsp kasoori methi (dried fenugreek leaves) the slightly bitter, curry house smell you cannot place. Sold in every Indian grocer and most large supermarkets
• salt and lemon juice

Kit

• Roasting tin or heavy pan
• Wooden spoon
• Stick blender
• Sieve

Method

1. Lift the chicken out of the tin and rest it. Pour off all but three tablespoons of the fat, keeping the browned juices, and set the tin over a medium heat on the hob.

2. Add the cumin seeds and let them sizzle for twenty seconds until they smell toasted. Add the onions and a good pinch of salt and cook for twenty minutes over a medium low heat, stirring regularly, until they have collapsed into a soft brown mass. Nothing you do later will make up for skimping on this.

3. Stir in the ginger and garlic and cook for three minutes until the raw smell has gone and the mixture starts sticking to the base.

4. Turn the heat down, add the ground coriander, cumin, turmeric and chilli powder and stir for one minute. Splash in two tablespoons of water if they threaten to catch, since burnt ground spices taste acrid and cannot be fixed.

5. Add the tomato puree and cook for three minutes, stirring, until it darkens and the fat starts to separate out at the edges. That separation is the sign the base is properly cooked.

6. Pour in the hot stock, scrape the tin clean and simmer uncovered for fifteen minutes until slightly reduced and the onions have completely broken down.

7. Blend with a stick blender until smooth, then push it through a sieve if you want the glossy restaurant texture. Return to a low heat.

8. Whisk the yoghurt in a small bowl to loosen it, stir a ladle of hot gravy into it, then stir the lot back into the pan off the boil so it cannot split. Add the garam masala and crumble in the kasoori methi between your palms. Taste, season with salt and sharpen with a squeeze of lemon.

Tips worth knowing

• Crush the kasoori methi between your hands as it goes in. The heat of your palms and the crumbling release the aroma, and whole leaves dropped in do very little.
• Yoghurt splits if it hits a boiling sauce. Loosen it first, temper it with a ladle of hot gravy, and keep the pan off the boil afterwards.
• Ground spices need fat and gentle heat for a minute, not high heat. If the pan is too hot they burn in seconds and the whole gravy tastes of ash.
• This is naturally gluten free as written, since the thickening is all onion. Check your stock if that matters.

Keeping and reheating

Five days in the fridge and three months in the freezer. It thickens as it sits. Reheat gently with a splash of stock and add a fresh pinch of garam masala once hot, since it fades with reheating.

Questions people ask