Last month Patak’s Canada asked facebook to weigh in on ‘the great debate’ when it comes to Indian cooking with Patak’s.
Paste or Sauce?
Many of Patak’s favourite flavours come in both a paste and a ready to use sauce. Which way to do you prefer?
The results on facebook were pretty divided, some like the convenience of the sauce and others enjoy customizing their dish to their own taste. The consensus remained the same though, everyone loves Patak’s!
What’s the difference?
Cooking with Sauce
By far the simplest and quickest way to create amazing Indian dishes is to use a Patak’s sauce. They’ve been expertly blended to give a great taste but in as short a time as possible. All you need do is fry some onions, brown off whatever meat you’re using, then pour over a jar of sauce and simmer for around 15 minutes. Easy, fast, and delicious!
Cooking with Paste
Patak’s pastes make the most delicious and authentic-tasting curries. All the spices are ground for you, then immediately blended with oil. This way the ground spices are caught at their freshest, before air gets to them and starts to change their flavour profile. To use one of the pastes, simply do the following:
- Fry onions in oil until soft.
- Add some curry paste and gently cook for a few minutes. This allows the spices to release all their wonderful flavours and aromas.
- Next add your meat or vegetables and cook until sealed.
- Finally add some water and leave to simmer for 15-30 mins depending on the recipe.
Pastes are really versatile – unlike the sauces you can add more or less paste to the recipe depending on how rich or spicy you like it. And you can use it in other recipes aside from curry – like marinades.
Because I’m a bit of newbie when it comes to Indian cooking, I like to stick to the sauces. Our favourite is the Butter Chicken Cooking Sauce served with a side of delicious basmati rice and homemade naan bread!
Butter Chicken
- 4 medium sliced, diced chicken breasts
- 1 small onion, diced
- 1 Jar of Patak’s Butter Chicken cooking sauce.
- Oil
- Heat 1 tbsp vegetable oil in a large pan.
- Saute onions
- Add chicken breasts and stir fry until meat is sealed and browned (approx. 5 mins).
- Pour the jar of Butter Chicken cooking sauce and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Best served up on a bed of basmati rice, with naan.
Need more inspiration and recipes to try? Visit GoodKorma.ca
I am part of the Patak’s Canada ambassador program and I receive special perks as part of my affiliation with this group. The opinions are this blog are my own.
I have not cooked with Pataks yet, might have to pick up one of their sauces to try out one of these days.
Definitely, something new for me to try, I love butter chicken, so this is a great idea for cooking at home!
We’ve always got Patak’s curry paste in the fridge! So tasty!
I’m sooo addicted to butter chicken right now.
We love butter curry chicken.
I have not cooked with Pataks yet,but a few of my friends have and they enjoyed it
You’ll have to give it a try! Patak’s makes cooking Indian food so easy!
I have used Patak’s pastes; definitely the way to go if you want authentic flavours. Plus the pastes are more adaptable, you can control the strength of the flavours and how the pastes are used. I do not like the sauces. And this is from an Indian girl.
I love these pastes! So delicious!
I use pork tenderloin instead of chicken using the Butter Chicken paste, and I always use the paste. Multiple meals from a single jar for the same price as one jar of sauce. I also like to putter with it a bit, and adjust the recipe to suit me. Harder to do that with the sauces. I also use the Hot and Vindaloo pastes – spicy garlic lentils! Num!
Pork Tenderloin is yummy, great idea to try it with that. Now that we are more experienced with Indian cooking we use the paste too, it just goes so much further. Sauces are great for beginners though. Vindaloo is another of our favourites as well!