Quick Microwave Curry

This is a really quick microwave curry that can be made in well under 10 minutes.  It’s adaptable and a great fast curry with the fewest of ingredients!  You can turn it into a microwave beef curry, or chicken curry or just a vegetable curry, what do you fancy?

I had to use what I’ve got in the cupboards already and I didn’t want to make a masterpiece, just a quick lunch curry to accompany the leftover biryani rice I had in the fridge!  I used my microwave noodle bowl to cook this as it’s the perfect size and has a lid.

You can use any vegetables you have really, frozen, tinned or fresh – although with fresh you need to pre-cook them a little, or cook the curry in the microwave long enough for them to be cooked (closer to 10 minutes in total).

These instructions are my “serves one” version, so the quantity of vegetables is how many you want!  It’s probably a heaped handful of small-cut frozen veggies, 50-70 grams or so I’d imagine (although I didn’t weigh them)

Ingredients: 

• Frozen mixed vegetables
• 1 teaspoon Pataks Balti Spice Paste
• 1½ tablespoons dried onions (or you can chop up your own or use jarred onions)
• 1 tablespoon of tomato ketchup
• ½ teaspoon garam masala (optional)
• Splash of boiling water

Method:

1. Pour some frozen mixed vegetables into a microwave safe dish and add a splash of boiling water. Not too much water, this will eventually become the curry sauce.
2. Add a teaspoon of Pataks Balti Paste (or any of their range if you’ve got another) and 1½ tablespoons of onions (dried, fresh or jarred).  Pataks Balti Paste just happens to be the one I’ve got opened in my cupboard already, so it made sense to use this today.
3. Give it all a stir round, cover the dish and microwave on high for 3 minutes
4. Add a tablespoon of tomato ketchup – this takes out any ‘bitterness’ from the paste, as you’re microwaving it and not frying it so it might not get the chance to fully ‘cook out’. I find this tones down the fieryness of the curry and smooths out the taste. I also added in ½ a teaspoon of garam masala at this point, just because I spotted it in the spice rack, but if you’ve not got it then go without!
5. Microwave on full power for another 2 minutes.
6. Leave the microwaved curry to stand in the lidded pot for 2-3 minutes before serving.

Serve with rice, or a naan bread.

Scaling up to Serves 2-4:

When scaling this recipe up, just add an extra 2 minutes or so to the overall cooking time for each extra portion you’re making.  This isn’t an exact science and your sole objective is just to ensure the vegetables aren’t hard and the sauce is hot – so you can always have a quick taster to decide!

Work Lunches:

This is a meal you can even take to work – simply mix all the ingredients together and just add the splash of water to them when you’re making your lunch at work!

Add Meat:

You can add meat to this too, to make a microwave beef curry, chicken curry, lamb curry or even ham!  Simply add leftover cooked meat, or if you’ve bought a pack of cooked meat, just throw in a handful of pieces at the start of the cooking process. The meat does have to be cooked first.

The meat does need to have been pre-cooked due to the cooking times in this quick microwave curry.  If you’ve just raw meat, then you can cook that in your microwave before you add the rest of the ingredients, cut into small pieces, a handful of raw chicken/beef/lamb would take just 5-6 minutes to cook in the microwave, before adding the rest of the ingredients as above.