Like my previous review I’m going to get straight to the point; is it hot? No. Is it tasty? Yes.

There were no usage instructions on the jar other than add to a tin of tomatoes and a small pot of natural yoghurt, so with no real idea of their specific use case, I made a curry as I normally would but substituted ground spices with the paste. There was a pointer to visit Mr Vikkis website for recipe ideas, but there wasn’t any for the Hot Goan paste other than using it with a jar or their curry sauce and a pressure cooker – neither of which I had. This is in my mind should be addressed as someone new to cooking curries may not have any idea on how to use a paste.

With that in mind, this is how I cooked a curry using Mr Vikki’s Hot Goan paste:

• 2 chicken breasts, cubed
• 1/2tsp coriander seeds
• 1/2tsp cumin seeds
• 1 onion, diced
• 1tsp minced garlic
• 1tsp minced ginger
• 150ml Chicken stock
• 400g tinned chopped tomatoes
• 4tbsp natural yoghurt
• 1tbsp tomato puree
• 2tsp garam masalla
• Glug of oil for frying
• 1/3 jar Mr Vikki’s Hot Goan Curry Paste (approx)

1. Add the oil to a pan and heat until hot. Add in the seeds and stir for 30 seconds
2. Add in the onions and fry until beginning to turn golden
3. Reduce the heat and add in the garlic, ginger and curry paste. Stir for a minute or so and add in the chicken. Stir until the meat is sealed
4. Add in the chicken stock, tinned tomatoes, yoghurt and tomato puree. Stir well and bring to the boil
5. Reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occassionally
6. Add in garam masala and cook for a further 2 minutes
7. Serve

I served this into two portions; one into a standard takeaway container to save for another day and one plated up. My first impression was that this was an oily curry – this isn’t necessarily a bad thing as oil in a curry helps to carry the flavour. However for me this was a bit much – the paste is oil based, which combined with the initial oil for frying probably contributed to this.

However, on the plate it both looked and smelled good. Time for the taste test…

The taste

In all honesty there isn’t really much to report, it tasted like a nice warming curry! However, it wasn’t a hot curry. This for me was a little disappointing as this was what I was hoping for with this, and after having other Mr Vikki’s “Hot” products it simply didn’t compare in heat levels. With regards to the actual flavour of the curry, it was very similar to what I normally make using ground spices, but was a slight improvement over Pataks curry paste.

Ease of use

As there were no usage instructions, this would be tricky for someone new to making a curry to know what they were doing. Otherwise it was straightforward enough.

Value for Money

I paid £3.75 for a 190g jar making this £1.97 per 100g. To compare, Pataks from Tesco is £0.80 per 100g and Tesco’s own curry paste is £0.70.

Made up, the cost of a curry for two works out as (negligible prices left out):

• £2.00 Chicken breasts
• £0.22 Onion
• £0.19 Chicken stock
• £0.40 Tinned chopped tomatoes
• £0.25 Natural yoghurt
• £1.25 Curry Paste

Cost per person: £2.16

Conclusion

This is an OK curry paste, I didn’t think there was anything special about it (unlike other Mr Vikki’s products), but in the same breath I didn’t find anything wrong with it either other than it wasn’t “hot” as promised.

Would I buy it again? Probably not sadly. There wasn’t much difference in taste over using Patak or ground spices, and because of that I personally don’t find it great value for money. Topped off with being a very oily curry, this just wasn’t for me.

The best chillies for curries are those that you enjoy eating. This is a very subjective question and mainly comes down to 3 things; the taste, the texture, and the heat level. For example, if you just wanted to spice up a tikka masala a little bit, then adding a Carolina Reaper into the pot isn’t going to be the best idea!

The taste

All chillies taste different and only you can be the judge as to what flavour each type is going to bring to a dish, but that being said they can as a basic rule be grouped into two categories – red chillies and green chillies. Red chillies when compared to their green counterpart of the same variety are generally hotter and sweeter in flavour. They do however tend to lose a bit of their distinctive sweetness and their flavour can be overwhelmed by the flavour of the curry itself. Red chillies are best used finely diced and added to bring the heat level of the curry up, rather than to alter the taste of the dish.

Green chillies on the other hand are slightly milder, but they have a much more bitter taste to them which you can still pick out against the flavour of the curry. Rather than being used to bring the heat level of the curry up, use green chillies either whole, sliced in two, or as a garnish for the dish.

The texture

The addition of texture that a chilli can bring to a curry completely depends on the variety of chilli used. Fleshy chillies such as a jalapeno could be used as a bell pepper alternative to bring a bit of spice, but still bring a chunkiness to the dish. Add later on into the cooking process as it will become mushy if left in the pot for too long. Long thin chillies, especially those packed with seeds, bring a lovely crunchy texture to a dish. Add from the start, or slice down the middle and use as a garnish.

Chillies with thin flesh (mainly hots and superhots) like the habenero don’t bring much in the way of texture to a dish and is almost unpleasant when used in large pieces due an almost leathery feel. Avoid using to bulk out a dish and instead use finely diced.

The heat level

This is where you can have some fun as experimentation is going to be needed! Decide whether or not you like a curry to be hot or not, and then find out where on the Scoville Scale your chilli of choice lies. The higher the Scoville Heat Unit (SHU), the hotter the chilli.

For the uninitiated, the humble supermarket Jalapeno would be a good place to start pumping up the heat level of a curry. For the intermediate then birdseye chilli (green as a garnish, red diced and added to the dish) is a good variety to use, or cayennes in either baltis or jalfrezi work amazingly. For the brave start off trying out the scotch bonnet, habenero, naga, or for the insane, infinity or carolina reaper.

In conclusion

There is no right or wrong answer to what is the best chilli to use in a curry – different dishes call for different ingredients and different chillies. Not the most helpful answer I know, but have fun and experiment!

Let’s get straight to the point.

Is it hot? Yes, very. This is surprising for a ready meal.

Is it nice? No. Not at all.

To make it clear this isn’t a case of “you don’t like it because it’s hot”, my favourite curries are hot but they have to have flavour. If heat is your thing then go buy this and fill your boots; it’ll knock most people’s face off, but straight out of the tub it’s bloody awful. From the taste of it, it’s just a tomato base with some cumin thrown in – it’s bitter and it’s bland. To make the Volcanic Vindaloo in any way nice you have to add a fair amount of salt to it, which many won’t feel comfortable with. 

To be honest I think the main reason why this tastes so bitter is the soggy green chillies that they’ve added – in my opinion green chillies should really only be added as a garnish after the cooking process as they impart quite a lot of their flavour to the dish if added during cooking. As the curry is so hot the chillies don’t bring anything to the meal other than their flavour.

This is a real shame as Morrisons’ other curries are actually really nice and don’t need anything else adding to them to make them tasty.

Growing chillies for any of the curry recipes listed on this site is actually a lot easier than you may think – all you need is a sunny windowsill, water and liquid feed and you’re all set to go. Growing chillies out doors in the UK is possible, but you’re heavily dependent on the weather. To give an example, in 2015 I grew more chillies outside than I could use from just three plants, but in 2016 I didn’t get a single fruit from 9 plants as it was just too cold and wet. Indoors I have two plants and get a large quantity of chillies from each plant throughout the growing season.

Which chillies should I grow?

That all comes down to personal preference when it comes to heat, however you should go for a variety that isn’t too fleshy like a Jalapeno as this will just add bulk to the dish. A good choice (and the one I grow) is the plain old birdseye as these have relatively thin flesh, are mid-range in heat and you can usually get the plants for £2-£3 from your local supermarket. Keep in mind that as well as different heat levels, chillies also have a very distinct flavour which could well end up in your curry if it’s too strong – for example the Naga has a very distinct flavour and adds a ‘burnt’ taste to the dish. Also have a think about the heat and how easy it’ll be to control. Again with the birdseye, I know that when cooking a dish for 4 servings when the kids are eating, one is enough. When cooking for just the wife and I, I use two. Just me and I’ll use 3 or 4. Now think about using a superhot such as the Naga, how much should you use? Just a single whole chilli could ruin the dish for most people who aren’t lagered up on a stag do…

Buy seeds or a ready grown plant?

I you’re early on in the season (around March/April) then you pretty much have the choice to either grow from seed or buy a plant, any later than this and you could be struggling with seeds.

Growing from seeds has the financial benefit of being able to buy 10-20 seeds for the same cost as a single plant. However, remember that there’s no guarantee that you’re going to end up with healthy plants (or any plants at all) when growing from seed, but if all works well then you’ll be laughing.

Buying a plant has the advantage of taking the risk out of growing from seed, however as mentioned above the price per plant is much higher. That being said, you get to see the health of the plant and with a bit of luck the plant may even have fruit already on it. If the plant looks unhealthy, or is mature but has no chillies then it’s best to walk away unless you can get it cheap enough.

How to care for the plant

Looking after a chilli plant is really easy – plant looking saggy? Water it. Leaves beginning to look yellow or fall off? Feed it. Roots coming out the bottom of the pot? Stick it in a bigger pot. In a nutshell it really is that simple. The feed I use is Buysmart FTF2000-1 2 Litre Tomato Feed Liquid Concentrate from Amazon and for the price it’s brilliant and I’ve had bumper crops when using it.

The only problem I’ve had when growing chilli plants indoors is greenfly. I have no idea how they get there, but they do. Every. Year. I decided to grow a couple of plants at work in the office this year, which is on the third floor and the little sods still managed to get in and find the plant. Caught early on they’re simple enough to deal with by taking the plants outside and give them a few good sharp sprays from a water bottle to dislodge the pests, if left untreated they can become more of a problem – flowers will drop off, chilli growth will be stunted and you’ll be left with a sticky mess around the base of the plant from the greenfly shedding their skin and the honeydew they secrete.

If your infestation gets this bad then your only hope of saving the plant is with the help of pesticides. READ THE LABEL CAREFULLY and ensure that whichever product you go for is suitable for edible plants, the last thing you want is pesticide that’s going to make you sick when you eat the fruit. There are two main types of pesticides that can be used; contact or systemic. Contact pesticides aren’t soaked up by the chilli plants so can be used up to 24hrs before harvest, but they are short lived and will need frequent application if you missed any aphids. Systemic works by entering the plant and kills any greenfly that decides to have a feast on it, but as it also goes into the fruit you normally have to wait for 14 days before it’s safe to harvest and eat the chillies.

What next?

Experiment. Have fun! There are literally thousands of different type of chilli out there, each with their own unique flavour and heat with which you can have fun with. Getting more adventurous, why not try and breed your own variety?

Have fun

Another important factor is the chopping of the onions. The finer the onion is chopped, the better it will blend into the sauce. In many recipes, onion, ginger and garlic are pureed to make a wet spice paste, which is fried until all the moisture has evaporated, before the ground spices are added. It is crucial to follow the timings specified in a recipe for each of these cooking stages.

Adding spices in the correct sequence is also vital. While some spices take only a few seconds to release their flavour, others need a few minutes, and if you add spices that require less cooking time together with those that need more, some will burn and others will remain raw. The simplest way to avoid this is to keep to the order in which the spices are listed in the recipe, and to be very exact about following the specified cooking time for each ingredient.

It is chilli in its powdered form that contributes to the colour of a curry. Keep in mind that chilli powder comes in different heat levels so if you want a rich red curry with little heat, use plenty of mild chilli powder. If you don’t want to alter the colour much (such as creamy curries), then use a little hot chilli powder. When buying chilli powder it’s always important to read the label!

Another way to give the curry a kick and make it appealing to the eye is to use a hot chilli powder in conjunction with a mild, or alternatively use some fresh chillies – fresh chillies are always hotter than mild. When buying fresh chillies make sure you understand the variety of chilli in the pack; another misconception of some people is that red chillies are hotter than green. Again this isn’t always the case – a green naga will always be hotter than a red jalepeno!

The most important point to keep in mind when adding heat to a curry is to add a little and taste. Remember that it’s always easier to add heat to a dish than it is to take it away!

In India the word curry is used to mean a sauce to make grains of rice (chawal) or bread (rotis) more enjoyable. When reading through some recipes or watching videos online you’ll probably hear the chef refer to it as either gravy or masala. Believe it or not, the rice or bread are actually considered to be the main part of the meal.

The word ‘curry’ is believed to have originated from the south Indian word kaari from the Tamil language, which means ‘sauce’ in English. When the British came over it is generally thought that the spelling was changed to ‘curry’, and this has stuck around ever since.

The main ingredients of a curry can change a great deal, and two very different dishes can both justifiably be called a curry. For example; a Lamb Balti and a Dhal are nothing alike yet both are still varieties of curry. In reality stripping everything right back, a curry is just a spiced sauce that has additional ingredients added into it. Simple, but very tasty.