I made butter chicken using what was promised to be an authentic Indian recipe.
Result?
It tastes like what borscht would probably taste like if made by an Indian person. I mean, it’s not bad. It just isn’t Indian.
In other gastronomic news, Klara says that pelmeni only taste right when N makes them. Yes, pelmeni are Russian. But how does he manage to make them more authentic? These are store-bought pelmeni. You throw them into boiling water and then fish them and once they float to the service. I stood and observed N make the pelmeni. There was no secret move. Still, Klara always knows when I made them and says they taste disgusting.
Clarissa's Blog 
The taste of food cannot be explained just by its chemical composition, I feel. The same wine tastes better when you know it’s an expensive bottle. The same food tastes different when you eat it at a fancy restaurant, all dressed up, vs bent over the kitchen sink.
Which is why blind taste tests suck. Information about the food is a significant contributor to its taste, so removing that information makes it a useless test that measures absolutely nothing.
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Maybe it has something to do with how your husband salts the water you boil them in??? That’s all I could think of.
Share the butter chicken recipe! I tried an obviously inauthentic but simple butter chicken recipe recently for an easy weekday meal and it was disappointing.
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Most Indian recipes, at least those targeted at Americans, have all the wrong spices, ime
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This hasn’t been true for at least a decade. Indian food in the US has become pretty common and even mainstream publications like the NY Times (and Serious Eats etc.) have pretty decent recipes.
This whole idea of authentic just seems wrong. Who decides what’s authentic? Like, there’s so much variation within even neighbors (let alone cities, states, or countries) that for someone to say there’s one way to make butter chicken/borscht is laughable. What this “authentic” discourse really is about is a way for POC/ethnics with zero personality to exert social dominance over their peers.
“Nooo, that’s not how my grandmother makes it.”.
“Well, maybe she was a shitty cook.”
Food should only be measured by how it tastes to you, not by how “authentic” it is.
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I was trying to imitate the fish we get at a local Indian buffet. But neither the taste, nor the coloring, nor the texture are even in the ballpark. It tastes good but not the kind of good I was aiming for.
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Yeah, the Indian grocery in my town is the best place to buy spices– you can buy a half-kilo bag of just about anything, instead of paying way too much for a quarter-ounce jar at the supermarket. We cook a lot of stuff with Indian spice mixes that we haven’t a clue about the “right” way to use. Tandoori lentils. Garam Masala pork. As long as the family eats it, and there are not sad leftovers moldering in the fridge after… I don’t see any authenticity police around, do you?
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This has just been my experience. I could be looking in the wrong places (mostly; I have had some luck.) My worry is not just about “authentic” but good. Indian food without the necessary herbs and spices is generally not good, to me. If other people like it that’s great for them.
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Our experience with indian spice mixes is…. generally, if you add one or more of the following, it comes out OK: yogurt, coconut milk, tomatoes, onions, or chicken broth. Then serve over rice. Never would have pegged coconut + tomato as a thing worth eating, but that’s what goes with garam masala.
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In my experience, Indian people don’t use premade spice mixes as much as they use their own combinations and/or herbs. Though I personally enjoy garam masala
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Every recipe has the same spices – coriander, cumin, turmeric, red chilli powder, garam masala. I often joke that in Indian recipes, the secret ingredient is the spice you don’t add!
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That’s a gross misconception about Indian cooking — probably rooted in the unfortunate practice followed by most Indian stores (like Patel’s) and several (if not all) Indian restaurants in the US involving repurposed curries for use across distinct culinary preparations. To a native Indian, it leads to a very jarring experience when dark lentils taste the same as rajma masala (kidney beans). Most Indian food in the US available in markets/restaurants is like eating airplane food with numbed taste buds that cannot distinguish spices or flavor nuances.
The good news is the spices available (imported?) in the US are now indeed very good and if one cooks at home with “authentic” recipes, it works out pretty well.
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I vote the “love every third stir”. (From Aunt Sophronia’s recipe for a different concoction)
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Didn’t we do this ages ago?
It’s just better and easier with the premixed spice boxes from an Indian grocery.
Making butter chicken with nothing but the jar of Sharwood’s (or worse, Patak’s) just sets you up for failure as you need to make adjustments for taste.
And you don’t get fish curry that’s right with a butter chicken recipe from a jar.
Yes, I use Sharwood’s as a time
saver, a pricey one at that, but I
don’t expect what’s in the jar to be
anything near what anyone would
find to be all that good.
Also, pelmeni: do you salt the water, or do it differently?
I use Redmond natural salt which
helps with texture and with taste,
especially works well for Italian
brass die cut egg pasta.
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“Klara always knows when I made them and says they taste disgusting”
She passes blind taste tests?
My suspicion was that she knows who made it and adjusts her standards accordingly.
Mom = always cooking… I can be as mean as I want!
Dad = making an effort! I need to support him!
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That’s exactly what my sister says about the situation, too. Maybe she wants to encourage Dad to cook to guarantee two food sources for herself. That would be a smart strategy.
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My kids do this– I cook most of the time. My husband cooks on his days off. They universally prefer what he cooks… and largely, I think, because he cooks less often so it’s more exciting/special.
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