The basic Goan Curry Paste is a red essential paste in any kitchen in Goa, India.
The paste is easy to make, saves you time for making a fresh curry from scratch and you can freeze a batch for another day.
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Smooth, spiced, and enriched by freshly scraped coconut.
That's how this Goan curry paste ought to be.
While it seems as if this basic cooking paste is difficult to prepare, it actually turns out to be a breeze to get this curry paste right.
The Goan curry paste is essential in any kitchen in the sunny coastline state of Goa, India.
Locals prepare it from scratch with commonly found fresh ingredients such as coconut, tamarind, ginger garlic, and spices.
The red coconut curry paste is used to prepare the all-famous fish curry, prawn curry, egg curry, and any vegetable curries such as sorak or bimli (cucumber tree) curry.
It's a basic, top essential Goan curry paste and all those who send me e-mails to post more Goan food, have to save this printable recipe and video now. 🙂
If you love lightly spiced, flavorful Goan food, then this is your next kitchen project.
I am going to post more curries here in the future with this paste as a base.
The red curry paste can be frozen so basically what locals do they freeze a batch or two and use it for another day.
It saves so much time while making a curry from scratch.
It will take you only 20 minutes to make a prawn curry from scratch with this Goan curry paste.
🔪 How to make Goan curry paste?
The key is to use fresh ingredients only, besides the spices.
Also when making the Goan curry paste you need to blend it to a very smooth consistency and that's the actual tricky part.
So, you need a good-quality blender to make this paste happen!
You will be blending for a couple of minutes and the coconut etc can be quite a load to turn all the ingredients into a fair, smooth paste without pieces.
At a certain point, the blender will go slower and have trouble reducing the whole content in the jar to a paste.
That's when you need a great tool and some water to create your red Goan curry paste.
Your blender jar will get super hot and the paste, after blending it smooth, will be hot and it will be even fuming.
In fact, you might be able to see the heat in the basic Goan curry paste video below.
👁️ More essential condiments for the Goan cuisine:
Dear reader, do you enjoy Goan food?
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📖 Recipe
Basic Goan Coconut Curry Paste Recipe
Ingredients
- 4-5 Kashmiri Chili or similar dried
- 2 ½ cups shredded Coconut
- 1 Tablespoon Tamarind Paste
- 1 Tablespoon Ginger + Garlic *see Notes
- ½ Onion
- ¼ Teaspoon Turmeric Ground
- ¼ Teaspoon Cumin ground
- ¼ Teaspoon Black Pepper
- 1 Teaspoon Coriander ground
- 1 Cup Water
Instructions
- Remove the stems form the clean red chili. Place into the blender jar and add the scraped fresh coconut.
- Continue to add in the Tamarind Paste, Onion, Ginger Garlic and spices (Turmeric, Cumin, black pepper and coriander seed powder) Then add 1 cup of water too.
- Close the lid and blend the paste. If the blending is getting heavier, turn off the kitchen gadget, open the lid and add some more water.
- Use in curry or freeze in batches for later use.
Notes
- Use a quality strong blender to prepare the paste.
- You can store the paste in the freezer and use whenever you want to make a curry. It simplifies and helps in reducing time when preparing a Goan fish curry from scratch.
- Makes about 1.1 pounds or ½ kilogram, which you can use for 2 curries. 1 curry = 6 servings. So the paste can serve up to 12 persons.
- Use Ginger and garlic fresh (ratio 1:2) or use in paste form
Made this for my wife and myself, she loved it !!
Any idea how to mike this into a sauce ..
Hi Steve, You can use this paste as a curry base as in a sorak curry, egg or shrimp curry.
Hi! I’ve never had a goan Curry but would love to try it. Plz can you provide directions as to how I can use this curry paste to make the actual curry.
TIA
Sumayya
HI Sumayya, you can use this paste in this sorak curry or in this egg curry or in this shrimp curry.
For how many weeks can this be frozen,?
Hi Sakina, you can freeze the curry paste for at least 2 months. Hope this helps.
Love making condiments like this and this one is very new to me. Coconut and tamarind...sounds very interesting with all those other seasonings. Thanks for sharing this.
I have never heard of this before but it looks delicious. I can't wait to try it!
Wow I just made curry yesterday !! Wish I would've stumbled upon this earlier to try it out. Next time for sure ?
I will be making this to freeze .Sounds delicious.One question ,the coconut if frozen alter the taste of the paste in any way ?
Hi Amrita,
Freezing the coconut curry paste doesn't alter the taste as such, however fresh is of course always fresh. I think you will have no problems with the taste of the frozen curry paste.
Fresih is always better, do not freeze it more than 2 weeks.
This looks absolutely delicious, I have never thought to make my own goan curry paste. Thanks for the recipe, I will pin for later.
There is really nothing. Enter than freshly made curry paste. I don't cook Indian food all that often so I freeze my fresh curry pastes in one tablespoon portions and that way I have fresh curry paste when I need it. I just love the colour of this tasty paste.
The curry paste looks so beautiful, those colors! I got to give try to this one soon.
This looks yummy. I remember Goan fish curries. They were very tasty. am sure this too.
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I will try making this. My husband and I we love curry. I didn't know you can freeze it, so that is one thing I love about it.
oh yum, sounds like some delicious flavours there. I love trying out different curry recipes. I'll have to give your paste a try. Thanks for sharing.
Lennae xxx
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Sounds like a recipe and quick one which it's even better.
Really like the fact that you can freeze this! I can make a bit batch of it that way and use it multiple times. 🙂 Good stuff -- thanks.
You gave clear instructions. This seems easy to follow, even for me. 🙂 The ingredients used sounds like they will taste good.
I had no idea how simple it is to make Goan Curry Paste. I have to try this recipe at home. Thanks for sharing!
Would you believe I've never tried this? I really need to get out more. Will definitely be spicing up my kitchen variety with this soon!
This sounds really interesting and easy to make. I just have no clue where I'm going to get fresh coconut in Chicago! LOL!
I think you should be able to get coconuts in an Asian stores. In Europe they sell coconuts in regular grocery shops so maybe you can just go to your neighborhood store, they must just have some. Otherwise I am sure you can buy it online too. Same goes for the tamarind paste. Amazon sells fresh coconuts and tamarind paste in the US. 🙂
Frozen grated coconut sealed in polythene bags and canned coconut milk is available, if there is a Indian population from the coastal regions of Asia Minor, where you live then, I am sure there will be coconut products available
I've never made my own curry paste; I've always done store-bought. This looks incredible though. I have to give it a try!
How interesting. I've never tried this before but would be open to it. I do love my spicy foods!
A good curry paste is an essential in making a tasty curry. This looks great and as it can be frozen too even better
There is nothing like making your own curry pastes! I so love the flavors in this one. Must give this a try soon!!
I've always fully appreciated that making your own curry paste fresh gives such a good flavour to any curry dish. Whereas it can seem like a faff, I've found that it is relatively easy and it is good to freeze too (as you mention). Always worth that little bit of effort.