11 Restaurant-Style Curries With Just 5 Ingredients

Final Plate: Small Lists, Big Flavor

You don’t need a dozen spice jars to make a curry that tastes like it comes from your favorite local restaurant. Focus on five strong elements: a quality main, an aromatic base, a concentrated liquid base (tomato, coconut, or cream), one signature spice or masala, and a finishing fat or cream. These recipes show how those building blocks replace long ingredient lists while respecting regional techniques—tempering mustard seeds for a South-Indian hit, reducing tomatoes for a North-Indian richness, and finishing with ghee for sheen and aroma. Small techniques do heavy lifting: searing protein, properly reducing tomato, and stirring in cream at low heat will change a simple pan into a restaurant pan. If you keep pantry staples like oil and salt on hand, you can rotate these eleven curries through weeknight dinners and weekend feasts alike. Try one recipe this week and notice how a single finishing tip—toast the spices, add a dot of butter, or pan-sear the paneer—transforms the final dish. That’s the kind of practical, neighborly advice you’d expect from Dadi’s kitchen, updated for busy modern life.