A traditional Goan-Portuguese dish of Meat simmered with a spice paste of fiery hot chillies ….lots of garlic and tangy vinegar. Sopped up with buttery dinner rolls, you’ll see why this dish is so loved at Indian restaurants around the World!
I owe my love of cooking to my Mom. She hardly ever follows a recipe, eye balls everything and is constantly changing the way she makes things…but the result is ALWAYS delicious. I learnt everything I know by just watching her in the kitchen. That said she has a few go to recipes that she hardly ever messes with and everyone always asks for them. This vindaloo recipe is one of them.
Vinadaloo, for those of you who haven’t heard of it originated as the Portuguese dish “carne de vinha d’alhos” which basically translated to meat marinated in wine-vinegar and garlic. The Goans (from Goa India) adopted this dish brought by Portuguese explorers in the fifteenth century and modified it by adding Indian spices & dry chilies known as Kashmiri Chilies, and they substituted wine for the more readily available Vinegar instead.
This dish isn’t for the faint-hearted and packs some heat with the Kashmiri chilies which also gives the dish it’s deep red color. Potatoes are often also added to absorb some of the spices and this tangy, fiery curry is best eaten with bread, naan or rotis to sop up the thick sauce. Paired with some cooling cucumber salad, yogurt and a chilled beer, it’s one of those dishes you can’t stop eating even if your mouth is on fire.
I have toned down the heat a little in my recipe, but the spice paste still packs some heat, so if you don’t have much of a tolerance for spice, I would highly suggest that once cooked you only add back some of the spice paste to the meat and not all of it. The remaining spice paste will keep in the fridge for a few weeks because of the vinegar in it. Another thing to note, is that you shouldn’t really skip on the oil while frying the spice paste as the spices can burn and turn bitter, and the releasing of oil from the paste is the best indicator of a well cooked spice paste. Once you prepare and cook the spice paste, you can pick whatever meat of your choice (chicken, lamb, beef or pork) and cook it however you want…in a slow cooker, pressure cooker or slow simmer it on a stove top until the meat is fork tender.
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- 2 lbs Pork (rib meat or shoulder), cubed
- 6-8 Baby potatoes, halved
- 1/4 cup oil
- Salt to taste
- 10-15 Dry Kashmiri Chilies (or chiles de arbol)
- 10 cloves of Garlic
- 1 small onion
- 4-5 Cardamom Pods
- 2 inch piece Cinnamon Stick
- 2 tsp Cumin Seeds
- 1/2 tsp Turmeric powder
- 3 Tbsp Sugar
- 1-2 tsp Black Peppercorns
- 1/2-3/4 Cup White Vinegar
- - Soak the Kashmiri Chili peppers in hot water of 5-10 minutes. Then slit and de-seed the peppers. Reserve the soaking water for later.
- - Add the soaked and de-seeded chilli peppers along with all the ingredients listed in the spice paste in a blender and blend to a smooth paste.
- - Heat 1/4 cup of oil in a frying pan on medium heat and once hot add the spice paste and cook, stirring occasionally, until the oil separates and mixture starts to sizzle, about 10-12 minutes.
- - Once the spice paste is cooked until the oil starts separating from it take it out of the pan and set aside.
- - You can now cook the the pork cubes in a slow cooker adding as much of the spice paste as you'd like on low for 6-8 hours, adding the potatoes in the last 1/2 hour of cooking.
- - Or you can cook the pork stove top with as much of the spice paste as you would like and the reserved water the peppers soaked in. Cover and simmer on medium-low heat. This usually takes about 60-90 mins depending on how tender you'd like the pork cubes to be. Add the potatoes for the last 20 minutes of cooking time until they are cooked through.