We are not going to pretend supermarket curry is inedible. Some of it is fine. But fine was never the point of Indian food, and the difference between fine and proper is all on the ingredients label.
See what proper looks like| Typical supermarket chilled curry | Mandira's Kitchen | |
|---|---|---|
| How it is made | Factory scale, often built on a shared base gravy. | Small batches, each dish cooked from scratch by hand. |
| How it keeps | Preservatives and stabilisers to survive the chilled shelf. | Blast frozen within minutes of cooking. The freezer is the only preservative. |
| The spices | Commodity blends, bought at scale. | Single estates: pepper from one Kerala farm, cardamom from one valley, turmeric from one region of Andhra Pradesh. |
| The ingredients list | Often long, and partly unpronounceable. | Reads like a recipe, because it is one. Our rule: if your grandmother would not recognise an ingredient, neither do we. |
| Awards | Occasionally. | 11 Great Taste Awards, and a quote from Nigella we will never stop using. |
Buy one supermarket butter chicken and one of ours. Eat them a night apart. Read both labels while you wait for them to heat. We are comfortable with how that evening ends, and if we are wrong, you have lost thirteen pounds and gained a fair comparison.
Not always, but chilled ready meals must survive days on a shelf, which usually means preservatives, added salt and stabilisers. A properly blast frozen meal needs none of those, because the freezing does the preserving.
Many are built on a shared industrial base gravy with different finishing spices. Small batch kitchens cook each dish from scratch, which is why a Xacuti and a Makhani from us taste like entirely different dishes rather than variations on one sauce.
A little, honestly. Our packs hold two generous portions from around £5 to £6.50 a head. You are paying for named-estate spices and hand cooking rather than marketing and shelf life. Whether that is worth it is your call, and we are relaxed about the answer.
Read the ingredients list. Ours reads like a recipe: chicken, tomatoes, cream, spices. If a list needs a glossary, that tells you how the food was made.
Award-winning Indian food, handmade in the Surrey Hills and delivered frozen to your door anywhere in mainland UK. Free delivery on orders over £75.
Shop the freezer mealsMandira's Kitchen, Shere Road, Albury, Surrey GU5 9BW · shop@mandiraskitchen.com · 01483 940789