Weekend Meal Prep: 4
Base Gravies
That Last All Week

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Quick Summary

Using Indian base gravies to prepare meals every week is an efficient way to cut back on time spent cooking, while still enjoying different meals. Tomato gravies, onion/ginger/garlic gravies, white gravies, and green gravies have different flavours and can be used in numerous ways throughout the week. When stored properly, base gravies are like building blocks—they provide flexibility for use in future meal planning, while also making daily meal preparation easier and quicker.

Deep Dive

Preparing meals over the weekend generally doesn't entail preparing complete meals, but it does provide your cooking with a solid foundation on which to build. In an Indian kitchen, the foundation of your meals is provided by base gravies, which are concentrated flavour oils that make up a huge percentage of the sauces used in many traditional Indian dishes. Because you prepare the gravies in advance and store them properly, you will spend less time cooking the gravies each day and more time simply preparing the rest of your meal. Your meals will be more consistent and provide an easier means of managing time, flavouring and portioning for all members of your family during the week.

Why Base Gravies Are the Backbone of Indian Cooking

In creating the layers of flavour used in Indian curries, use a base gravy made ahead of time so that any curries can change into multiple dishes with different ingredients at any time. This also allows you to create all your different styles of cooking with only one base and gives you options on how you want to use the base as you prepare your meals. A base can be used to create vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes, along with dry and semi-gravy styles, or from mild to robust flavour profiles.

Tomato Base Gravy: The Universal Workhorse

Tomato gravies are used for dishes in the North Indian and Indian restaurant-style cooking. Tomatoes have natural acidity, body, and colour that give good balance to cream, butter, and spices used later in cooking, and with a little creativity, you can make quick dishes like paneer or egg gravies, lentil dishes, and so on. When made in bulk, tomato bases freeze well, without a loss of flavour, whereas tomato base tastes like it was fresh when prepared.

Onion–Ginger–Garlic Base: Depth Without Dominance

This base uses slow-cooked onions combined with aromatic spices to create a savoury yet slightly sweet flavoured base. This base is less bold than the tomato base, which is a good choice for cooking everyday meals. You can easily change this base to create new flavours by adding spices, tomatoes, yoghurts, and/or stock. The gravy is a versatile addition to your kitchen store cupboard.

White Gravy: Mild, Creamy, and Customisable

White gravies depend on body from ingredients like poppy seeds, melon seeds, or cashews rather than on fragrance; their advantage is in being neutral. Because the flavour is mild, white gravies readily absorb spices, fats and herbs that are added at the end of the cooking process. Therefore, white gravies work well in fatty dishes or when a mixed-spice tolerance is required. Prepared in advance, white gravies will help assemble rich meals much more quickly than starting from scratch.

Green Gravy: Freshness That Cuts Through Heaviness

Green gravies rely on herbs, such as green chillies, mint and coriander, for brightness and freshness. As such, they are effective in cutting through very rich or creamy elements in a meal that generally involves a great deal of contrast. When prepared and stored correctly, green sauces can be used for the quick assembly of herb-packed curries and kebab sauces, fusion cuisines and any other dish where a fresh flavour is required.

Storage, Shelf Life, and Smart Transformations

Base gravies should be completely cooled prior to storage, and portioned out so that they don't require repeated thawing. For short-term use, refrigerated base gravies should last for a week; base gravies that have been frozen will remain usable for a number of weeks to come. The real benefit of frozen or refrigerated base gravies lies in the ability to transform them by adding protein, altering the level of spice, finishing with a tempering or merging them with various textures, and therefore creating multiple unique dishes with little to no noticeable repetition.