Most people are scared of attempting to cook a curry from scratch. The common misconception is that it is easier to reach for a ready made curry sauce from the supermarket in the belief that you will save yourself the hassle and worry about what spices you need, what order to use them and in what quantities and what dishes need which ones! Forget ready made sauces, they are generally full of oil, salt and preservatives and taste terrible when compared to traditional home made Indian food.

The real secret to making a good curry

In order to make your curry making much easier and more intuative the best plan is to do what the Indians do and use a Masala dabba or ’spice box’.  Rather than fiddling around with those little jars of spices that tend to sit unused in your cupboard you simply pop the lid off and you have everything you need to make a good curry set out in front of you. Here are some spices you may find in the typical masala dabba: 

• Turmeric
• Chilli Powder
• Ground Cumin
• Mustard Seeds
• Cumin Seeds
• Coriander Seeds
• Garam Masala

When you have everything there in front of you it is amazing how easy it is to make a great dish as many curry dished start off with a similar base.

The following is a great base that can be used as a start to many Indian dishes:

1. Add one teaspoon of mustard and/or cumin seeds to some hot oil

2. When the seeds start popping add some finely chopped onions (for some recipes add garlic/ginger here)

3. Fry off the onions slowly until they go a nice golden brown colour

4. Add one teaspoon of turmeric

5. Add one teaspoon of garam masala

6. Add one teaspoon of ground cumin

7. Add half a teaspoon of chilli powder

Gently fry off the onions and spices for a couple more minutes and you have a great base for many currys. From here you can simly add some cooked meat, fresh chillies, vegetables or tinned coconthen some chopped tomatoes (fresh or tinned), and/or a tin of coconut milk to form your gravy. The options really are limitless.

The beauty of this method really lies with the masala dabba. You simply chop and fry your onions, pop open the dabba, add your spices and away you go!

Want one? Check out our Masala Dabbas in the Chilliking Shop!

Technorati Profile

Now is the time to start planning which chillies you are going to grow in 2009 and we are pleased to offer a selection of chilli seeds for sale online. As an added bonus we are offering free postage and packaging on all orders within the United Kingdom.

Over the coming months we’ll be increasing the number of chilli related offerings available online, so be sure to check out the online shop from time to time. As you’d expect all payments are secure and all you need to get started is an active paypal account. Happy shopping!

BUY CHILLI SEEDS NOW

Most people know that having a higher metabolism means you burn more calories. 

But what exactly is metabolism? Metabolism is the amount of energy (measured in calories) that your body burns in order to maintain itself. Every individual’s metabolism is dependant on a huge number of variables such as their fat to muscle ratio, body weight, fitness, diet etc. Roughly speaking if you burn more calories each day that you consume over time you will lose weight.

Muscle is known to burn more calories in order to sustain itself than fat so roughly speaking the fitter you are, the higher your metabolism will be and the more calories your body will burn. This is why people exercise to help lose weight.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to raise your metabolism without all the hard work in the gym? Well eating chillies have been shown by several studies to raise you metabolism by as much as 20%. So maybe chillies are the new super food that can help you lose weight.

Well before you get too excited eating chillies only raises your metabolism for a very short period of time so the overall effect of extra calories burnt per day is not huge from ‘normal chilli consumption’. In order to eat enough chillies to make a big increase in the calories you burn every day you’d need to eat such huge quantities that you would most probably damage your stomach!

So as with all things diet related the boring advice of taking regular exercise and eating a healthy balanced diet holds true once more. However it would be fair to say that chillies will help a little in the battle against the bulge!

Ristras are strings or arrangements of chilli pepper pods that are hung to air dry. They are thought to have originated in South America as a simple/practical way to dry out surplus chillies for consumption at a later date. More recently ristras have increasingly been used for decoration in kitchens around the world and in some countries they are even thought to bring good luck to the household.

There are a million and one ways to make a ristra however before you start you first have to make sure you have the right type of chili peppers. Ideally you want a variety with fairly long thin fruit such as the Cayenne. More fleshy varieties such as Jalapenos can be ristra’d however there will be a greater chance of the fruit rotting rather than drying out. If you do select a more fleshy variety be sure they are hung in an area with lots of sun and ventilation to maximize their drying time.

Making a Dried Chili Pepper Ristra

Though probably not the most traditional ristra making technique, this is probably the quickest and easiest. Here is what you need:

- a good crop of fresh chillies
- a length of fishing line
- a large sewing needle

When picking your chillies try to ensure you leave a portion of the green stem above the fruit as this is where you will be threading them.

Start by putting a large knot in one end of your line and threading you needle onto the other end. Then it is simply a case of threading the chillies onto the line through the stems. However in order to ensure your ristra keeps a nice shape when threading the stems, hold your needle upright, point to the sky. When you thread the chillie stem on aim to have it at a 45 degree angle, with the stem higher than the pod. As you push the chillies down to the bottom of the line you may need to turn the peppers roundslightly each time to avoid any empty areas in your ristra.

Once your ristra is finished all you need to do is hang it somewhere where it will get ideally plenty or light and heat. On a sunny porch is probably ideal but if you leave in colder climes such as the UK then infront of a south facing window is probably best. As the chillies dry out they will usually take on a much darker colour. Be sure to remove any pods that look as though they are going mouldy. If this is happening try to move the ristra into a more ventelated area until the drying process is complete.

A big thank you to all those of us that came to see The Chilli King stand at the Grand Designs Live show. It was great to put a face to many of the names we’ve seen in emails over the last few month.

What surprised us most about the show was the huge interest that exists in growing chillies, even at a non horticultural show like Grand Designs Live. It seemed that the vast majority of people we spoke to had tried to grow their own hot peppers at some point in the last couple of years. Despite not being the best year weather-wise here in the UK to grow chillies it was great to hear that so many of you had had a successful crop.

And of course for those that haven’t done so well this year it was good to hear that on the whole you’re determined to not give up and try again next year! If you purchased some of our seeds be sure to check out our articles on growing chillies.

We’d like to thank SolarDome for allowing us to share one of their fabulous glass domes at the show. If you were watching TV in the eighties/nineties yes this is the same company that made the infamous Crystal Maze domes, the only difference being this one wasn’t filled with gold and silver tokens but chillies!

If you have been inspired by our site to start growing your own chillies then you should come down to the National Exhibition Center (NEC) at Birmingham between Friday the 10th & Sunday the 12th of October 2008. We have been invited to exhibit at the Grand Designs Live exhibition hosted by non other than the Grand Designs presenter Read the rest of this entry »

If you ask anyone why chilli peppers are hot you will usually be greeted with a long pause and a scratch of the head. Having hot fruit, and seeds in particular is rather counter intuitive from a evolutionary perspective.

It is generally accepted that plants produce nice tasty colorful fruit to attract and encourage animals to eat them and spread their seeds allowing the plant species to spread. So why then do chillie plants encase their seeds in capsaicin (the chemical that produces the heat in peppers) that will put off all but the most determined or hungry of animals?

Well researches from the National Academy of Sciences think they have finally solved the mystery.

Firstly it should be noted that the various species of chillie plants out there have been able to survive and spread thanks to the inability of most species of birds to detect the heat present in capsaicin. Secondly it seems that capsaicin is produced to help plants prevent the fungus Fusarium. Fusarium is the biggest cause of seed mortality in the wild and therfore the heat produced by chili plants is simple their evolutionary way to protect their seeds.

I’ve just read (I’m shamed to say on the daily mails website) that retail giant Tesco is going to start stocking the “Dorset Naga”, what some consider to be the worlds hottest chillie (although I beleive the official record is held by the bhut jolokia from India). This is surely the clearest sign yet that chillies really are hitting the mainstream. It was not long ago that you were hard pressed to find any varieties of chili in big supermarkets chains. Recently many have started branching out from the generic “Low, Medium or Hot” types many sell and are regularly stocking different varieties such as Jalapeno, Scotch Bonnet, Habanero, or Birds Eye.

What is more interesting is that the article states that Brits spent over £9 million on chillies in 2007. This is clear proof that chillie pepper culture is now in the mainstream. For a country known for it’s bland cuisine by it’s European neighbours that is not bad.

It will be interesting to hear about the inevitable complaints from customers that buy a pack of nagas and casually toss them in their evening stew, thinking they are nothing special. Not many people will be aware that these babies are about 100 times hotter than your average Jalapeno pepper. When this happens no doubt the mail will follow up with a suitably scare mongering article about how these killer chillies are the biggest threat to Britain since Sangat!

One of the questions we get asked a lot is why do the flowers keep dropping off my chili plants without any fruit (chillies) forming?

Flower drop (known to some as “blossom drop”) is a relatively common problem faced not only by chillie growers but by gardeners growing all kinds of fruit and vegetables. It happens when your plant flowers then each flower falls off without any fruit forming. There are a few possible causes and suggested remedies outlined Read the rest of this entry »