![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Meg Reviews Recipies: MasterFoods Slow Cook Mild Chicken Curry Sauce
This sauce comes in a 490g jar, and I bought it at the local Coles, probably when it was on special for about $2.50 - $3.
I made this up as a slow-cooked casserole with some cheap beef sausages (if you've ever had to eat cheap Coles beef sausages, you'll understand why they really need some other flavour added to them), a chopped onion, a couple of carrots sliced up, and four chopped up potatoes. Pre-cook the sausages before you start, then chop them into about 1.5cm chunks before putting them into the casserole with the other ingredients. The trick with making a slow-cooked casserole in the oven is this: put everything together in a casserole, cook in the oven for about 1 hour at 200C, pull out and stir, then put back into the oven for the rest of the afternoon at the lowest temperature you can get your oven to run at without extinguishing itself (if you can get your oven down to 100C, that's the best, otherwise, anything under about 150C is good). Let it cook slowly for about 4 hours, and you'll get a very nice casserole. This trick works well with any casserole you'd normally put in the slow cooker[1].
The sauce itself is very thick for a pour-from-the-jar sauce - usually I can pour these sorts of sauces straight from the jar, but this one definitely required the assistance of a spoon to get it out. I also did my standard trick of "swill out the bottle with a small amount of water"[2] in order to get the last of the sauce out. Now, it was probably lucky I did that, because the eventual casserole came out very, very dry (thanks to the potato soaking the liquid up).
As a curry sauce, this is incredibly mild. This is "you could serve it to curry virgins" mild. The main notes in the sauce which identify it as "curry" at all are cumin and turmeric - cumin is the main thing you can smell, turmeric is the main thing you can see (a quick look at the breakdown of ingredients on the label of the jar says "Coriander 1%, Cumin 1%, Turmeric 1%). They mention Chilli on the label, although I strongly suspect the nearest an actual chilli came to this particular sauce was someone very cautiously opened the warehouse door and waved a single chilli in the vague direction of the production line, before closing the door again very quickly. It's very much a "sweet curry" mixture rather than a spicy one - to the point where I joked with Steve that I should have chopped up an apple and added that to the mix, along with a handful of sultanas. (I should note the Look I got for that one was worth it)
Overall, it made a nice meal for two people, served up with rice, and with enough leftovers for another two meals afterwards. There wasn't much sauce (as mentioned, the potato got most of it) so it was a pretty dry curry. I think the next time I make it up, I'll probably put a bit more water in the mix, and a bit less spud (and I may just try the "sweet curry" variation, as a way of playing around with things).
Difficulty: 1 out of 5 (put all the ingredients into the casserole dish, and off you go)
Spoons/Fuss and Bother: 1 out of 5 (wasn't expecting the sauce to be as thick as it turned out to be.
Overall: 2 out of 5 (not spectacular, not terrible).
Considerations: Lists Skim milk and milk in ingredient list, and warns it's manufactured on equipment that processes peanuts. Not suitable for vegans.
[1] I wasn't using the slow cooker in this case because it's winter here, and our oven is also the effective space heater for the kitchen area.
[2] For creamy sauces, milk will work instead. You're using about a quarter to a half a cup of liquid in any case; shake the bottle until the whole mixture becomes a single consistency, then add to the dish you're cooking.
I made this up as a slow-cooked casserole with some cheap beef sausages (if you've ever had to eat cheap Coles beef sausages, you'll understand why they really need some other flavour added to them), a chopped onion, a couple of carrots sliced up, and four chopped up potatoes. Pre-cook the sausages before you start, then chop them into about 1.5cm chunks before putting them into the casserole with the other ingredients. The trick with making a slow-cooked casserole in the oven is this: put everything together in a casserole, cook in the oven for about 1 hour at 200C, pull out and stir, then put back into the oven for the rest of the afternoon at the lowest temperature you can get your oven to run at without extinguishing itself (if you can get your oven down to 100C, that's the best, otherwise, anything under about 150C is good). Let it cook slowly for about 4 hours, and you'll get a very nice casserole. This trick works well with any casserole you'd normally put in the slow cooker[1].
The sauce itself is very thick for a pour-from-the-jar sauce - usually I can pour these sorts of sauces straight from the jar, but this one definitely required the assistance of a spoon to get it out. I also did my standard trick of "swill out the bottle with a small amount of water"[2] in order to get the last of the sauce out. Now, it was probably lucky I did that, because the eventual casserole came out very, very dry (thanks to the potato soaking the liquid up).
As a curry sauce, this is incredibly mild. This is "you could serve it to curry virgins" mild. The main notes in the sauce which identify it as "curry" at all are cumin and turmeric - cumin is the main thing you can smell, turmeric is the main thing you can see (a quick look at the breakdown of ingredients on the label of the jar says "Coriander 1%, Cumin 1%, Turmeric 1%). They mention Chilli on the label, although I strongly suspect the nearest an actual chilli came to this particular sauce was someone very cautiously opened the warehouse door and waved a single chilli in the vague direction of the production line, before closing the door again very quickly. It's very much a "sweet curry" mixture rather than a spicy one - to the point where I joked with Steve that I should have chopped up an apple and added that to the mix, along with a handful of sultanas. (I should note the Look I got for that one was worth it)
Overall, it made a nice meal for two people, served up with rice, and with enough leftovers for another two meals afterwards. There wasn't much sauce (as mentioned, the potato got most of it) so it was a pretty dry curry. I think the next time I make it up, I'll probably put a bit more water in the mix, and a bit less spud (and I may just try the "sweet curry" variation, as a way of playing around with things).
Difficulty: 1 out of 5 (put all the ingredients into the casserole dish, and off you go)
Spoons/Fuss and Bother: 1 out of 5 (wasn't expecting the sauce to be as thick as it turned out to be.
Overall: 2 out of 5 (not spectacular, not terrible).
Considerations: Lists Skim milk and milk in ingredient list, and warns it's manufactured on equipment that processes peanuts. Not suitable for vegans.
[1] I wasn't using the slow cooker in this case because it's winter here, and our oven is also the effective space heater for the kitchen area.
[2] For creamy sauces, milk will work instead. You're using about a quarter to a half a cup of liquid in any case; shake the bottle until the whole mixture becomes a single consistency, then add to the dish you're cooking.
no subject
no subject