Pork Vindaloo
Hot-sour-spicy Portuguese-Goan recipe of slow-cooked pork with spices, vinegar and garlic.
- Cooking time3 hours
- Calorieskcal
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.
Ingredients
- 1 kg pork shoulder
For spice mix
- 5 g dried red chillies
- 10 g whole cumin
- 5 g poppy seeds
- 3 g cloves
- 3 g black pepper
- 5 g whole mustard seeds
For marinade
- 20 g garlic
- 20 g ginger
- 5 g fresh red chillies
- 10 g tamarind pulp
- 50 g palm vinegar
- 27 g salt
For cooking
- 30 g oil
- 4 cm stick of cinnamom
- ½ tsp mustard seeds
- 300 g onions
- 3 g turmeric
- 5 g kashmiri red chilli
- 10 g jaggery
- 1 sprig curry leaves
- 425 ml water
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 to a powder.
- Next, grind together garlic, ginger, fresh red chillies, tamarind pulp, palm vinegar, and salt.
- Cut the pork shoulder into 4-cm pieces.
- Marinate the pork with the dry and wet spice mixtures, and leave it overnight in the fridge.
- The next day heat mustard oil in a pan until smoking.
- Temper with a stick of cinnamon and mustard seeds.
- Add the sliced onions and fry them until brown, about 15 minutes.
- Add turmeric and the kashmiri red chilli powder, and fry until bright red.
- Now add the marinated pork and fry on high for 10 minutes to brown the meat.
- Lower 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 hot water (about 425 ml). Cover and cook on medium until the pork is soft but still retains a bite.
- (At this point you could also cook it in a pressure cooker to cook it faster.)
- 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.