Basaar is a ground curry blend from northern Pakistan and Kashmir. Chilli comes first, then turmeric, coriander, cumin and fenugreek, with warm spices underneath. One tablespoon seasons a curry for four. You will see it spelled basaar, bassar or basar, depending on who packed it.
In the valleys of Mirpur, in Azad Kashmir, basaar is a staple. Cooks there use it almost daily.
It came to Britain with the people who cooked it. When the Mangla Dam flooded villages across Mirpur District in the 1960s, more than a hundred thousand people lost their homes, and the British firm building the dam arranged work permits for three hundred of them. Those men sent for their families. Mirpuri households settled across Bradford, Birmingham and Luton, and the spice travelled with them. From the home kitchen it moved into the trade. Most Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani restaurants in Britain use it now, sometimes straight from the bag, more often folded into a house blend of their own.
Is curry powder the same as basaar?
Chilli takes the first slot in basaar. In British curry powder, coriander takes it and chilli sits well down the list.
Cook a basaar recipe with curry powder and you lose the edge it was built around. The result turns mild and fragrant where it should bite. Go the other way and you overshoot: chilli leads basaar, so the same spoonful brings heat your eaters have not prepared for.
The two blends also arrived from different directions. Indian merchants sold the first curry powder to British traders who wanted the food without keeping twenty spices at home, and it reached a London shop counter in 1784. Basaar skipped that history. Cooks in Kashmir carried on making it the way they already did.
What does basaar mean in English?
No English word covers it. Shops label it Kashmiri curry masala, which gets you closest.
Where the word came from, nobody has written down. Several sites will hand you an answer and none of them cite a source, so distrust the confident ones. You can check where people cook with it, though, and that points to northern Pakistan and Kashmir.
What goes into it
Recipes shift from house to house and brand to brand. The spine holds:
- Chilli, often Kashmiri, for colour as much as heat
- Turmeric
- Coriander and cumin
- Fenugreek, for the bitterness at the back
- Warm spices underneath. You notice them after you swallow rather than while you chew. They give the sauce its depth, and without them a curry tastes thin however much chilli you add.
Most blends carry oil alongside the ground spice. Ours uses mustard oil. Nothing else in the tin does more to separate basaar from a supermarket curry powder, and you taste it as a sharp savoury edge, the one you get in restaurant cooking.
Heat shifts from blend to blend, so read the packet before you commit. Ours sits at medium.
Can you make basaar at home?
You can, and the list above is where to start. Toast and grind your own cumin and coriander. Use Kashmiri chilli in place of cayenne. Go heavier on the chilli than feels sensible.
Most people get as far as the shopping list and stop. Our label carries thirteen things. Buy all thirteen and you own thirteen jars, three of which you will finish. Grinding a batch worth making takes an afternoon. Do it once anyway, for what that afternoon teaches you about the blend.
How to cook with it
Basaar goes in with the tomatoes, not into dry oil on its own. Brown your onions first, deep golden rather than soft. Give the garlic and ginger a couple of minutes. Seal your protein. Then add the blend, the salt, the tomatoes and the water together, and cover the pan.
Now stop watching the clock. Wait for the oil to separate and rise to the top in little pools, and for the sauce to turn from watery to glossy. That is the bhuna, where the spices have cooked out and married the tomatoes. If the oil has not risen, your curry is not done, whatever the timer says.
A tablespoon does a curry for four in about thirty five minutes. The full method, with quantities, is in our chicken curry recipe.
What to use if you have run out
No clean substitute exists. In order of least bad:
- Kashmiri chilli powder and curry powder, half and half, with a pinch of ground fenugreek.
- Curry powder on its own with extra chilli. Flatter, but it works.
- Garam masala, stirred in at the end instead of the start. You end up with a different dish, and a good one.
Roosma Basaar, 300g, £4.95. Blended in small batches in the UK.