What is Dum Aloo?
Dum Aloo is a popular Indian Curry that is made with different variations throughout North India. The most popular dum aloo recipes, are the Restaurant Style Creamy Dum Aloo, Kashmiri Dum Aloo, and Bengali-style Alur Dom. All these three recipes are made using baby potatoes, but completely different styles of cooking.
About This Restaurant Style Dum Aloo
This restaurant-style recipe is a creamy, and scrumptious curry that is spicy, with a mild tartness from yogurt. The gravy is made using onions, tomatoes, and cashews. And a spiced yogurt mix is prepared as well. This version is heavily infused with north Indian flavors and is perfect to make for special occasions or when you are hosting guests.
What is the difference between Kashmiri Dum Aloo and The Punjabi Dum Aloo?
The Kashmiri Style of cooking this curry does not involve any use of onions and garlic. The sauce is made with a generous amount of oil, yogurt and a few spices with a tempering of cumin seeds, and then the fried baby potatoes are added to the curry. While the Punjabi style of cooking this curry sauce has the base of onions, tomatoes, and cashews along with spiced yogurt. Everything is slowly cooked and then the baby potatoes are added. The curry is deliciously creamy from cashews and yogurt, and no extra cream is added to the curry.
Expert Tips to Make this Recipe
Cook the baby potatoes until a fork can effortlessly pierce through it. This means that the baby potatoes are boiled and there is no need to fry them. I just sauté them in red chili powder, turmeric, and salt in some oil, to make sure they develop subtle flavors.
Soak the cashews in hot water at least for 10 minutes. to make sure they grind into a smooth puree. Making spiced yogurt is very important. Use full-fat plain desi dahi (Indian Yogurt) to make this.
I add fennel powder, which adds a refreshing flavor to this recipe. You can either grind the fennel seeds with onions, tomato, and cashews or add fennel powder to the spiced yogurt. I add the same spices at 3 different stages in this recipe. This helps to develop the depth of flavors, and bring a luscious orange color to the gravy. To add smokiness to this curry, you can heat up the coal, once it is well burnt, place it in a heat-proof small bowl. Make a well in the curry, and place the bowl in it. Now add ghee on top of the hot coal. And cover the pot. Trap all the smoke in the curry. After 5 minutes you can open the lid and take the bowl with the coal out.
Ingredients to Make This Recipe
Boil the Potatoes
Baby Potatoes - Baby Potatoes are popularly used in this recipe, but if you cannot source them, or you don’t want to buy them specially. You can also use regular golden potatoes, just cut them into bigger pieces. Water - You will need about 8 cups of water to cook the baby potatoes Salt - A pinch of salt to cook the potatoes
Make the Curry Base
Cashews - The curry sauce will have creamy, nutty, and mildly sweet flavors from cashews. If you don’t have cashews you can soak almonds and remove the skin before grinding them in a puree. Onions - I like to use yellow onions for this recipe. They caramelize well as them cook, and render sweeter notes. Tomatoes - I use a very small tomato to give the required tang and sweetness to the curry, but you can totally skip it. Ginger, Garlic and Green Chili Paste - Make ginger garlic and green chili paste using ½ inch ginger, 4-5 small cloves of garlic and 1 Thai green chili
Spiced Yogurt
Indian Dahi - Use plain full-fat Indian Yogurt to make this recipe. If you want to use greek yogurt, use plain unsweetened greek yogurt, and skip adding tomatoes. Fennel Seeds Powder - Fennel means Saunf or Variyadi. I like to grind some fennel seeds in my spice grinder to make a smooth powder. Fennel seed powder perfumes the curry the beautifully with its refreshing flavor. Other Ground Spices - Red chili powder, turmeric, and cumin-coriander powder are also added to the yogurt. Salt - Adding salt to yogurt before cooking the yogurt prevents the yogurt from curdling when introduced to heat.
Final Curry
Ghee/ Oil - I like to use oil in this recipe to make it, but you can totally use ghee or a mix of ghee and oil. Whole Spices for Tempering - Once the Oil is hot, we will add cumin seeds, bay leaf, and green cardamoms. Ground Spices - Kashmiri Red chili powder, turmeric, cumin-coriander powder, garam masala, and kasuri methi, are the ground spices we use for this curry. Cilantro - Finely Chopped Cilantro in the end for garnishing.
Video To Make Dum Aloo
More Recipes You Might Like From The Blog
Latest Recipes on the Blog
