Chicken Balti Recipe | Restaurant Style | Hint Of Helen (2024)

FAQs

What is the difference between a curry and a Balti? ›

Curries are usually made in regular pots, while Balti curry is made in a special pan called a “balti.” Also, Balti curry has a mix of spices and ingredients, and it's often served right from the pan it was cooked in, which makes it different from other curries.

A tomato based sauce with peppers, cumin and coriander.

Balti curries are cooked quickly using vegetable oil rather than ghee, over high heat in the manner of a stir-fry, and any meat is used off the bone. This combination differs sharply from a traditional one-pot Indian curry which is simmered slowly all day.

Bhuna and Balti come under medium spiced preparations like dopiaza, rogan josh and Karahi, and Bhuna is a dry variant compared to Balti. On the other hand, Rogan Josh and Bhuna are similar in many ways as they are both prepared with many tomatoes, but Bhuna tends to be drier than Rogan Josh.

The Karahi curry is a spicy dish and is a particular favourite in Northern India and Pakistan. It is related to the Balti and Jalfrezi as all of them are stir fried dishes. A Karahi is actually the name for a type of Indian iron round bottomed wok in the same way that a Balti is a flat bottomed metal dish too.

As the balti is named for the utensil used to cook it, there are no definitive ingredients list associated with it. Traditional curry flavours like tikka masala, tandoori, rogan josh and korma can all be cooked in a balti style. Nevertheless, there are some features which are common to all baltis.

Balti spices such as, cardamom and black pepper are all thought to ease digestion problems. Three common Balti ingredients – garlic, onion and chili peppers – have been found to help reduce high cholesterol levels.

Balti is considered as a healthy curry dish since healthy spices like turmeric powder, garam masala are used and it contains generous vegetables like tomatoes and bell peppers along with the main ingredient like chicken, meat, seafood or paneer.

There are suggestions that it comes from Baltistan, a town in Northern Pakistan, while others claim that it was first served in Adil's restaurant in 1977 in Sparkbrook in Birmingham, which lays foundations to what was later known as the Balti triangle.

Add the chicken breasts, browning for a few mins on each side, then stir in the balti paste, quinoa and onions. Sizzle for a few mins, then pour in the tomatoes and stock and give everything a good mix. Bubble for 25 mins until the quinoa is tender and saucy.

Is karahi the same as Balti? ›

Balti is the term used for cast iron round-bottomed wok, also called karahi - the utensil in which the curries are cooked.

It is a mild, tomato based curry made with a fresh blend of many aromatic spices, and it is a very 'wet' curry, with lots of tasty gravy. It is usually cooked with chicken or lamb, with the addition of fresh garlic, ginger, onion, chopped tomatoes, coriander leaves and 2-3 tsp of the Balti spice mixture.

It is a mild, tomato based curry made with a fresh blend of many aromatic spices, and it is a very 'wet' curry, with lots of tasty gravy. It is usually cooked with chicken or lamb, with the addition of fresh garlic, ginger, onion, chopped tomatoes, coriander leaves and 2-3 tsp of the Balti spice mixture.

The dish that it's cooked in is an Indian cast iron, round-bottomed wok with two handles calle a karahi. The curry is characteristically a meat (or veg) dish with a thick, spicy tomato-based sauce. Usually, it's heavy on the chilli heat with a little tanginess from the yoghurt that's added.

/ (ˈbɔːltɪ, ˈbæltɪ) / noun. a spicy Indian dish, stewed until most of the liquid has evaporated, and served in a woklike pot.

Balti is the dish you see served in beautiful stainless steel bowls. It usually comes with naan bread, which in many cases doubles as your cutlery. The sauce is generally thicker than in a standard curry and the meat tends to cut more thickly. It's not as trendy as it once was, but is still a mightily fine dish.