Ghee whizz

From making your own pastes to slow-cooking cheaper meat cuts, Dan Toombs shares his tips to take your curries to the next level. By Prudence Wade

- Prudence Wade

YOU really can’t go wrong with a curry. Warming, filling and tasty, they're the perfect meal for this time of year.

But you don’t have to spend all your money on a takeaway to have a delicious curry at home - just ask Dan Toombs, AKA the Curry Guy.

Dan, 60, is obsessed with bringing curries to the masses, and has just released his 11th cookbook, ‘The Curry Guy Slow Cooker.

After moving from California in 1993, he fell in love with the British curry scene, later begging his way into restaurants to learn the secrets behind the perfect dish. Now based near York, Dan knows a thing or two about taking your curry to the next level...

IT’S ALL ABOUT THAT BASE

‘There’s a base sauce for pretty much every curry that's made, he says. “It's quite a bland sauce, similar to chicken stock or vegetable stock.

“The magic happens when it hits the pan, because you have different spices to make the different curries.”

So if you get this base sauce down - and it’s “quite simple to make” according to Dan - you're sorted. “It’s the secret behind how to make real curry house-style foods. It’s not something they do very much in India, it’s really a British thing”