The British Indian Restaurant (BIR) curry is more a style of cookery than anything else, though Bengali dishes tend to dominate. In fact, it could be said that most typical BIR curries include: a tomato-based base curry sauce; ginger-garlic paste; tomato purée; a basic curry mix powder along with cooked meat or vegetables along with curry spices or spice powders unique for the specific curry being made. There are currently 334 BIR recipes in total presented on this site.

As well as the classic BIR curries with the ingredients mentioned above I am also including balti dishes her as balti-style restaurant dishes (bāltī gosht) have become a mainstay of many British Indian (as well as Bangladeshi and Pakistani) restaurants. It should be noted that many of the 'Indian' restaurants that opened in the 1960s and 1970s had Bangladeshi proprietors, which is why Bangladeshi-style dishes presented as 'Indian' foods tended to dominate.

The term curry seems to have entered English via Portuguese from the Tamil கறி kaṟi meaning 'sauce' or 'relish for rice' possibly in conflation/syncretisation with Bengali কড়াই, romanized: koṛāi the dish use to cook a curry in the Bay of Bengal, where the British East India Company was largely based. However, it was not until the early 1600s that English commercial activity (and exploitation) of India began, when East India Company ships docked at Surat in Gujarat in 1608. The company established its first Indian factory in 1615 at Surat, and its second in 1616 at Masulipatnam on the Andhra Coast of the Bay of Bengal. This is how the Bay of Bengal became the early gateway into India. It was from ports in the Bay of Bengal that enterprising Englishmen entered India at the behest of the East India Company made. Many fell in love with India and on returning home they required Indian spices to take with them. Enterprising Bengali merchants mixed spice blends to the English taste (and to make maximal profits) that tended to be heavy on turmeric and absent of chilli (chilli had not really penetrated into Indian cookery at this time). These exotic spice blends made their way to England and became part of the posher dining tables.

Indeed, this new exotic cuisine became desirable, so much so that in 1747 Hanna Glass provided a recipe for 'To Make Currey the Indian Way' in her The Aft of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, the classic Georgian cookbook. The spices were limited to turmeric, black pepper and ginger with lemon juice to acidify. The recipe, effectively is an English-style chicken soup with cream added to thicken and the spices there to add heat and a little flavour. However, even prior to this, with officials from the East India Company returning to England. Many wanted to recreate a slice of their time spent in India. Those who couldn’t afford to bring back their Indian cooks satisfied their appetite at coffee houses. As early as 1733, curry was served in the Norris Street Coffee House in Haymarket. By 1784, curry and rice had become specialties in some popular restaurants in the area around London’s Piccadilly. Just two decades later and England had its first curry house, the Hindoostanee Coffee House, which opened in 1810 at 34 George Street near Portman Square, Mayfair, London. The proprietor was Sake Dean Mahomed.

Another notable book, for the Anglo-Indian audience was published in the Indian Sub-continent. This was THE INDIAN COOKERY BOOK: A Practical Handbook to The Kitchen in India (author unknown), published by: WYMAN & CO., HARE STREET CALCUTTA circa 1869 which lists a large-range of Indian dishes and accompaniments. The book was re-published in 1880 and again, under a new publisher circa 1890. Most of the classic BIR curries of today are listed in there (though the preparation is sometimes quite different). I'm slowly working through this book and will make its text as well as modern redactions of the recipes available on this site. I have the text of the 1869 edition of The Indian Cookery Book represented in facsimile edition on this site, with links to many of the recipes in redacted and modernised form. This book is of interest and import to this discussion as it presents, for the first time in English recipes for kitchari/kedgeree, pilau, dupiazas, koftas, jalfrezis, tikkas, kormas, bhajis, bharta/bhurttha and vindaloos; all dishes that have become mainstays of British Indian Restaurant (BIR) cookery.

At the same time, curry recipes appeared in most recipe books (as exemplified by Mrs Beeton, Eliza Acton and even Francatelli); these employed a much larger range of spices (plantations in the Caribbean had started to make exotic spices much more commonplace); though the first spice blends tended to be more aromatic, more like Panch Pharon (Bengali five-spice) than modern Indian spices. Though that is hardly surprising considering that the Bay of Bengal remained the main region that these spices came from.

The association with curry and Bengal remained for over a century and was even made stronger with immigration of people from the Sylhet district of Bangladesh in to the UK from the 1940s to 1950s. In the 1960s many of these immigrants began to open 'Indian' restaurants in major cities. From these evolved the classic British Indian Restaurant (BIR) style of curry.

The BIR style evolved from curries made on the Indian sub-continent... firstly to make the curries more palatable to restaurant audiences of the 1960s and 1970s and secondly to make the curries easier to prepare. Once you had a base gravy, a basic spice mix, ginger-garlic paste, tomato puree and pre-cooked meats you could add chillies and pre-mixed specific curry powders or pastes to alter the flavour of the curry and you could easily prepare hundreds of different curries with different flavour profile and spiciness levels.

The BIR style was born and it became a style all its own (and unless you use the BIR style you simply can't replicate a British Indian Restaurant curry at home). Recreating authentic dishes, however, is a wholly different proposal. But this page is about BIR cookery. The foundation of the BIR curry is a base gravy; essentially a lightly-spiced onion and tomato soup that forms the backbone of the curry, but which is mild enough to carry the flavour of the remainder of your ingredients.

The key components of any BIR curry are: base curry sauce or Indian restaurant curry base Ginger garlic paste Tomato Puree curry mix powder curry spice powders (for the specific type of curry to be made) cooked meat paneer (fry this until golden)

The basic BIR cooking method goes like this. Dilute your base curry sauce slightly, place in a pan and bring to a rolling boil. Pre-dilute your tomato puree to the consistency of single cream. Measure out your ginger-garlic paste and your spices so they're ready to add to the curry. Measure out the correct quantity of pre-cooked meat or vegetables or fried paneer.

Place your pan or wok over high heat. Add a splash of oil and when hot add the ginger-garlic paste and stir-fry for 30 seconds. You want the past to no longer be raw but not to burn (otherwise you will add bitterness). Stir in the tomato puree, bring to a boil and reduce slightly. Ideally you want the tomato to change colour slightly so it is cooked and sweetens.

Scatter over the spice blends, stir to combine and stir-fry for 1 minute. Add a little of the base curry sauce (typically 1 chef spoon, about 5 tbsp). Bring to a simmer then add your meat, vegetables, seafood, mushrooms or paneer. Stir to coat in the spices and base sauce.

Now add the remaining base sauce, bring to a boil and cook to thicken to your liking. During this cooking time the base sauce may stick to the sides or base of your pan. Don't worry, this is good as it adds flavour. Just keep scraping the sides and base of the pan as this returns the stuck bits to the sauce (again you don't want any burning as this will add bitterness).

Once the sauce is thickened to your liking, garnish and serve. All this will take 15-20 minutes and its not difficult at all.

This is the base method for preparing the majority of BIR-style curries.

Note, however that not all British Indian (or Bangladeshi or Pakistani) Restaurant curries are prepared in this manner, especially as there are moves towards presenting more authentic dishes of late... something that the public is also ready for. So, though all the curries presented below are all from British Restaurants, not all are BIR style as presented above.

I also need to mention balti-style restaurant and dishes here.

A balti or bāltī gosht (Urdu: بالٹی گوشت, Hindi: बाल्टी गोश्त) is a type of curry both cooked and served in a thin, pressed-steel wok called a 'balti' or 'balti bowl'. The name probably came from this vessel, in which this dish is also cooked. 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. the origins of the word can be traced to the area of Baltistan, in the northern part of the region of Kashmir, where a cast-iron wok, similar to the Chinese wok, is used for cooking. Baltistan shares a border with China which explains more the stir-fry method of cooking a balti, as opposed to the slower stewing of a curry.

In the UK, the balti will be forever associated with Birmingham. The dish was first served in a restaurant called Adil's, located in Stoney Lane, Sparkbrook. This being the first of Birmingham's famous 'balti houses'. Balti houses were originally clustered along and behind the main road between Sparkhill and Moseley, to the south of Birmingham city centre. This area, comprising Ladypool Road, Stoney Lane, and Stratford Road, is still sometimes referred to as the 'Balti Triangle', and contains a high concentration of balti restaurants.

The food and its style of presentation proved very popular during the 1980s, and popularity grew in the 1990s. Balti restaurants gradually opened up throughout the West Midlands, and then a large part of Britain. Interestingly, though Balti is a distinct BIR style, there are baltis adapted to BIR style of cookery that are available in more traditional BIR style restaurants.

Below are listed all the BIR curry recipes available on this site; with more being added monthly: