Top 8: These chicken curries are a great alternative for Friday night takeaways
Chicken curry is an ideal dish to warm us up as the autumn nights close in.
The nights are closing in, with thoughts of cosy fires, marshmallows toasting, and rugs (or people) wrapped around us. We can also put fire in our bellies and warm ourselves from the inside.
Our food should be rich in autumnal colours, and it may be no coincidence that the spices that warm us have rich tones of orange and brown – cumin, coriander, chilli, turmeric and mixes – garam masala, curry powders and Spanish paprika in flakes, powders and pastes.
While we have looked at chicken curries today, plenty of online recipes are easy to make and satisfying. You might find it time-consuming to source all the spices, but once you have them, they’ll last a year.
In this survey of supermarket offerings, we found a useful rating of hot spicing indicated by the number of chillies on the pack, but it seemed that some of the harsher spices could have been heated in a pan before being added to vats of sauce.
It’s a shame that Irish companies don’t use Irish or at least EU chicken. Some companies acknowledge it comes from Thailand but others skirt the country of origin, saying it's EU with some non-EU chicken.
Yes, the readymeal may be cheaper but it comes with sky-high air miles and a high environmental cost.
A generous 53% tasty chicken comes from British farms and was grilled before adding to a sauce of cream, coconut milk, tomatoes, ginger and garlic purées, and spices including turmeric, green cardamom, and cloves – a warming, complex range of spices for depth of flavour and interest.
The two-chilli rating perfectly indicates the heat level from red chillies, which have a less harsh flavour than green.
9.5
Cooked basmati rice was particularly good and the accompanying sauce was a bit livelier and hotter than we expected for just one chilli.
As well as green chilli, ginger, galangal and lemongrass flavours came through nicely. Tender chicken pieces (20%) come from the EU – not Ireland, but at least not travelling huge air miles.
9
Pilau rice (44%) accompanies tender, baked chicken breast – a fair 22% delivering 36.9g protein. – with a sauce made from green chilli, tomatoes in a few forms, garlic and ginger, with creaminess supplied by yoghurt and coconut milk, which softens the spicing.
A four-chilli rating was accurate with a lively but not harsh kick. EU chicken. Serves one. Widely available.
9
We found this a little bland, but the one-chilli label highlights this. The big plus is that the tender chicken is Irish and the meal is made in Ireland.
Chicken at 26% is decent delivering 23.8g per quarter of this pack which could feed four. There are peas too and the sauce is thickened with wheat and rice flours, but it’s not too gloopy.
8.5
Power rice seems like hyperbole when describing this basic food, but the brown rice comes with quinoa, chilli, broccoli, garlic and ginger, though not in a quantity that would likely give us an energy boost and the texture is quite chewy.
The chicken sauce is thickened with flour and seems quite salty though it has only 0.2%. The 25% chicken is cubed and tender.
At 34g protein, in the pack is not more than others we tasted. Non-EU chicken.
8
Green peppers give it a kick, with red and yellow chillies, lemongrass and galangal, kaffir lime peel which are all discrete.
A depth is added with shrimp paste and there are some chopped green beans. A three-chilli rating with spices softened with coconut milk.
The brown rice has a good bite and the small cubes of chicken breast are tender. From non-EU countries as well as the EU. Widely available.
8
With 23% chicken which includes water and salt, protein content at 6.2g per box is low. The taste is mild which is good for those new to curry.
One taster noticed a slightly toasty/burnt flavour but may have not recognised the fenugreek, clove, and turmeric in the curry powder. Peas add texture.
There is no indication of where the chicken is from. Produced in Drumshambo, Co Leitrim, we bought in O’Learys SuperValu Tower, Co Cork.
7.5
Three chillies on the label indicate it’s fairly hot, and hot it is, with spices which could have benefited from a flash in a frying pan to mellow them before adding to the sauce.
Chicken at 22% delivers 31.4g protein, and more background warm spices of cinnamon and cumin work well to deliver an interesting sauce.
While produced in Ireland the chicken comes from the EU.
8.5
