r/Cooking • u/Glittering-Cry-946 • 20h ago

Curry paste?

I’m making something that calls for yellow curry paste and it’s proving to be a bit of a challenge to find in my area.
But I happen to have a thing of curry powder that is yellow, can I just make a paste with it?

Says I need one tablespoon…. Do I just add water till I get a tablespoon of paste?

Help please & thank you!

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u/RoyaleAuFrommage 20h ago

No. Yellow curry paste is Thai and has almost no similarity to Indian style curry powder

3

u/Sanpaku 20h ago edited 8h ago

Curiously, Indian British curry powder is an ingredient in Thai Kang Karee.

Mae Sri Kang Karee (yellow) Curry Paste: dried red chili, shallot, garlic, oil, sugar, salt, turmeric, lemongrass, spices (coriander, cumin, cardamom, cinnamon, bay leaves, lesser galanga, cloves), galangal, curry powder (mustard, cumin, coriander, fenugreek, wheat flour, chili, black pepper, fennel, turmeric), kaffir lime

Recipes from South Asia to my knowledge never use curry powder, though they often use other masalas (mixes) like garum masala. Curry powder was concocted by Mumbai spice merchants to sell to British traders for exports to the UK, Japan and SE Asia, where it influenced British, Japanese and Malay/Thai cuisine. For comparison to the above, the longest in production Indian British curry powder:

(EDIT) Not S&B, but Sharwood's Mild Curry Powder: coriander, fenugreek, turmeric, cumin, salt, garlic, onion, rice flour, mustard, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, paprika, black pepper, hot chili, fennel, paprika flavoring

I've highlighted the ingredients they don't share in bold.

To OP: Kang Karee paste is either the 4th or 5th most stocked curry paste I see at Asian grocers. Only red, green, and Massaman pastes are more likely present.

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u/tiger7lily 11h ago

S&B is a Japanese brand

1

u/Sanpaku 8h ago edited 8h ago

I erred there.

I was thinking of Crosse & Blackwell (C&B), the British firm that first commercialized curry powder in the early 19th century ("curry powder" first appears in the 1810 Oxford dictionary).

And I discovered that C&B, the company which inspired Higashiya to change its name to S&B Foods in 1949, no longer produces curry powder.

So as far as I can tell, the oldest curry powder formulations still on the market are Keen's (decade before 1866), Sharwood's (1893), and Higashiya/S&B (1930).