Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Review: Patak's Original Korma Curry Simmer Sauce


I've got to say, I've had some real successful experiences with Patak's products here on the blog. Some have been better than others, but as a whole, they've been quite good. It's those positive experiences that led me to pick up this twelve ounce jar of Patak's Original Korma Curry Simmer Sauce at Kroger for $2.99. I like reviewing these not only because I've had good experiences, but also because they help me expand my culinary experiences with Indian food, which is a cuisine that I had zero interaction with for my entire life up until these past few tears. Since this curry is cream based, it's a little higher up on the calorie scale compared to some of its brethren at 280 calories per half cup serving, but that's fine in the grand scheme of things.  If the heat of Indian food scares you, there's not much to fear here as this one score's as "Mild" on Patak's heat scale that they conveniently place on all their jars.



The first thing that you notice when you see the jar on the shelf and also when you open it is the vibrant yellow color, which is a by-product of the abundance of tumeric in this.  I was watching Food Network recently (I watch too much anyway) and I saw a demo with Bobby Flay where he said that while tumeric doesn't always add a lot of flavor, it does add a whole lot of color and as you can see, that's definitely the case with this curry.  As for the rest of this, it was thick due to the fact that it is cream-based and then you could see a smattering of coconut and also various spices spread throughout the curry.  These spices included onion, cilantro, garlic and other miscellaneous spices that provided an aromatic and wonderful array of smell.

As I took a spoonful of this for a test, I was hit by all those flavors all at once, which made it difficult to discern what was what.  Since I am reviewing for a food blog, I would say that the most noticeable flavors in this semi-dense, creamy sauce were those of the cilantro and garlic which provided a somewhat nose clearing freshness to the mix.  It wasn't spicy, but it did have some pop.  As for the coconut flavor, I can't really say that I was able to noticeably detect it.  There was a different tasting flavor that came on in the aftertaste and perhaps that was supposedly the coconut, but I can't say that I can pinpoint that exactly.  Frankly, there was so much going on with this that while I liked what I was tasting, I couldn't process everything individually.  That said, the creaminess that was mixed with all this "freshness" did provided for an interesting flavor combination that I can't say that I've had in a lot of typical American foods like an Alfredo sauce (I know that is technically Italian, but we've bastardized it so much that it might as well be considered American).

Buy It or Fly By It?  Everything about this was different and/or confusing compared to what I am used to, but despite that, I enjoyed this and give it a BUY IT rating.  It's not so different that it's a turn-off, but the creaminess of this does make it sort of confusing.  Even with that, this is still a good product and definitely worth a try if you want something different.  There's not much heat here either, so don't let that be a perceived reason to scare you away from adding a little "spice" to your life either.

BUY IT!!

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