How To Make Restaurant-style Food At Home

Whether or not you are Indian, using Indian spices is an art that can be learned with a lot of practice and careful negotiation. A lot of people really love good, spicy Indian food, but when they try to make Indian recipes at home they never have the same depth of flavor or spice levels that restaurant food has

Whether you try cooking with ghee instead of butter, and simmering the sauces for various recipes for an extended amount of time to try and further develop the flavors, it is difficult to get  get that same depth of savory delicious flavor.

For example, here are some extremely simple recipes of butter chicken, saag paneer, and black lentil dahl. These are the basic steps only:

Cook aromatics in ghee in a dutch oven over medium heat.

Add spices like red chilli powder, black pepper powder, etc.  and cook until they are fragrant.

Add base for sauce (be it tomato sauce for butter chicken, spinach for saag, etc) and protein (paneer, lentils) and simmer for 30-45 minutes.

Add cream/dairy and simmer on low until ready to eat (at least 20 minutes)

While these dishes have all been tasty, they don't compare to restaurant quality Indian food in terms of flavor.

Wondering how to get that depth of flavor? Also, what spices to use to make the dishes spicier? 

Here are some ideas!

Turns out it's all about the prep and making certain key ingredients in advance.

These are:

base gravy (mostly onions, plus carrots, peppers, cabbage, garlic, spices, oil, (I forget the whole list)). It takes about 4 hours to make it.

Ginger-garlic paste

Mixed powder (kind of like home made garam masala)

Spiced oil (optional)

spiced tomato sauce (optional IMO).

Some khada masala

You make/buy those in advance and then you start every dish with all the fresh ingredients that go into your chosen Indian dish.

So there will be some fresh onions, maybe some chicken, lamb, paneer or tofu, fresh or canned tomatoes, fresh peppers etc.

You start with the spiced oil, roast your spices in it, add the ginger garlic paste, add fresh onions, add the base gravy, add the fresh and canned veggies and finally add your protein, plus some finishing salt and spices to taste.

The whole process takes 10-15 minutes or so, but you need to have all of your ingredients ready to go in advance.

By now I've made this type of food dozens of times, and unless I burn stuff or over spice, it tastes like Indian Restaurant food every time.