why do Indian meals never taste as good when bought from a supermarket?

Question

When you buy a meal from an Indian takeaway such as a chicken Dansak or Jalfrezi or Pathia, they always have a certain taste, which is delicious and can't get enough of, but when you buy them from a supermarket they always seem to be lacking a certain taste and you usually end up disapointed. What is this taste which is missing?

Answer 1

I think there's two reasons...

1. Your favorite Indian restaurant has worked the dish to perfect it... based upon "family secret" recipes. The supermarket just throws stuff together to make a similar dish... similar but very generic.

2. The Indian restaurant will have the special equipment needed to make a dish... such as a tandoor. The supermarket won't spend the money to buy specialized equipment.

Answer 2

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erminMember since: 02 February 2007

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Why do Indian meals never taste as good when bought from a supermarket?
When you buy a meal from an Indian takeaway such as a chicken Dansak or Jalfrezi or Pathia, they always have a certain taste, which is delicious

Answer 3

If you think about it, most indian restaurants are run and catered for by Indian people who obviously know how to cook the food. Indian meals bought from a supermarket are mass produced in factories with all sorts added to them. Do you think an Indian person would agree that it was traditional to put sultanas or raisins in a curry? No, I dont think so. Why dont you have a go at makin some Indian cuisine for yourself? Get a cook book that was written by someone who knows first hand what traditional Indian food is and then go to a shop (not supermarket as they stock very ''English'' versions of the proper ingredients) and buy what you need. (Saying about the supermarkets, Tesco are getting better, they have quite a bit of traditional Indian ingredients on sale now)

Hope I helped you ! xx

Answer 4

what you have there is pretty good. the two key things to make sure you do in order to loose a lot of weight is to keep a very good and healthy diet and also do aerobic exercising which includes running jogging weights cycling and other cardio exercises. however, one that many people look down on is jump roping which by the way is by far the most effective aerobic exercise. if you were to jump rope for an hour, it would burn almost 700 calories and you burn between 10 and 15 calories for every minute you jump rope. the reason why many people forget about this is because they think its elementary and too easy. although the concept may be easy, if you are not in shape, you will find yourself out of breath after a few minutes. anyway, you should start with just jump roping as long as you can until you know you cant take it anymore and build up from that. try setting goals for yourself. you do not have to do this everyday, you should try other exercises. i would say the second most effective cardio exercise is swimming. so go for it! good luck!

Answer 5

Because the ones from the takeaway are cooked fresh, the ones in the supermarket are cooked in the factory, then you go home and nuke them again, ruins the flavour, the supermarket ones will contain more than just meat and spices etc, chemicals and flavour enhancers that are crap will also be listed on the ingredients

Answer 6

1 you have to cook it yourself
2 pre packaged food loses flavour
3 ingredients not fresh
4 the people at a India takeaway generally care about the food and know what to do and how to cook it. Where as supermarket food is generally shoved into containers on a assembly line

Answer 7

i enjoy a good curry but i put it in the fridge and serve the next day and it tastes much better. i think because all the spices have had a chance to absorb in to the meat. In takeaways they have some dishes that are cooked slowly for a long time .try my tip and your curry should taste better.Its all to do with time.Thats what makes a g8 curry.

Answer 8

It's the same with all takeaway food,like chinese,pizza's and burgers,they all taste great from the takeaway,but if you buy them in the supermarket,they don't taste half as good.Homemade food tastes better.

Answer 9

Because the "chicken" in ready meals in supermarkets consist of only 7% chicken, 49% water, 20% artificial sausages, 15% recycled toilet paper and 9% "other"

Answer 10

Probably because it is not authentic. I've never bought it from the supermarket before. I either eat it from this restaurant where I know the owner/chef who is actually Indian, or I eat it at home when my dad makes it who by the way is Indian. Plus we have secret ingredients that we put in our food that most chefs don't know about.