Yields
5 servings
Cooking Time
3 hours
Ingredients
- 1kg Pork shoulder
For spice mix
- 5g Dried red chillies
- 10g Whole cumin
- 5g Poppy seeds
- 3g Cloves
- 3g Black pepper
- 5g Whole mustard
For marinade
- 20g Garlic
- 20g Ginger
- 5g Fresh red chillies
- 10g Tamarind pulp
- 50g Palm vinegar
- 27g Salt
For cooking
- 30g Oil
- 4cm stick Cinnamom
- ½ tsp Mustard seeds
- 300g Onions
- 3g Turmeric
- 5g Kashmiri red chilli
- 10g Jaggery
- 1 sprig Curry leaves
- 425g Water
Vindaloo was born in Goa sometime in the 16th or 17th century after the Portuguese set up colony there. The word vindaloo comes from the Portuguese recipe ‘vino de alhos’ where ‘vino’ refers to (wine) vinegar and ‘alho’ is the word for garlic. Vindaloo is a fusion of Portuguese, Goan and South Indian ingredients and cooking.
This particular recipe comes from the book ‘Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerers‘ by Lizzie Collingham. The book, besides being one of the best writings on Indian food history, has some fantastic recipes such as this one. We looked at a lot of recipes, both online and in books, but honestly this recipe of vindaloo—though a little more elaborate in the number of spices—is in our opinion one of the best.
Considering just how good this vindaloo tastes, it is really easy to make if you have all the ingredients. While the original recipe used pork, you can use duck instead of pork too.
Recipe Notes
Method
- To create the vindaloo spice mix, dry roast Dried red chillies whole cumin, poppy seeds, cloves, black pepper, and whole mustard and grind them into a powder.
- Next, grind together garlic, ginger, fresh red chillies, tamarind pulp, palm vinegar, and salt to form a slurry.
- Cut the pork shoulder into 4-cm pieces.
- Marinate the pork with the dry spice mixture and the marinade slurry and leave it overnight in the fridge.
- The next day heat mustard oil in a pan until smoking.
- Temper with a stick of cinnmon and mustard seeds.
- Add the sliced onions and fry them until brown, about 15 minutes.
- Grind fresh ginger with twice the weight of water. You will need 50 grams of this paste for this recipe.
- Tilt the pan to let the oil pool on one side. In the oil fry the turmeric and the kashmiri red chilli powder until bright red. Stire to mix it back with the onions.
- Now add the marinated pork and fry on high for 10 minutes to brown the meat.
- Now turn the heat to medium, cover and cook for 20 minutes. The pork will start releasing juices.
- Chop jaggery and add it to the pan.
- Once you are happy with the colour of the sauce, add water (about 425g). (At this point you could also cook it in a pressure cooker to cook it faster. The flavour won’t quite be the same.) Cover and cook on medium until the pork is soft but still retains a bite.
- Once the meat is cooked and the consistency of the sauce is to your liking add the curry leaves, cover with a lid, and turn off the heat.
- Once cool, put the vindaloo in the refrigerator. Vindaloo is almost like a pickle. Like any braised dish it gets better with time. Plan to make this at least a day ahead so that meat has the chance to soak in everything. Serve with plain white rice or yellow rice.
Serve with
Appliances
- Stove
- Grinder
- Weighing scale
