With National Curry Week taking place from 5th to 11th October 2026, home cooks across the country are reaching into their spice cupboards to recreate their favourite takeaway dishes. However, experts from Yorkshire-based Kashmiri food specialists Aagrah Foods warn that a few common mistakes could be holding your homemade curry back from tasting rich and authentic.
Drawing on decades of experience creating authentic Kashmiri cuisine, Aagrah Foods has revealed the five most common errors people make when cooking curry at home, along with simple ways to get better results:
1. Rushing the onions
Onions form the absolute foundation of many curries, and chopping them uniformly while giving them enough time to cook is essential for developing depth and sweetness. Turning up the heat to speed things along can leave them burnt or undercooked. Aagrah recommends taking your time to cut onions neatly so they cook evenly, and being patient while frying until they are properly softened and golden.
2. Assuming more chilli means more flavour
A curry does not need to be painfully hot to be packed with flavour. Chilli should be viewed as just one part of a wider flavour profile alongside herbs, garlic, ginger, tomatoes, and onions. Aagrah suggests deciding on your ideal heat level first and balancing other spices around it. Opting for Kashmiri chilli powder, a blend of four or five different chillies, delivers a better-balanced flavour than standard, fiery chilli powder.
3. Throwing every spice in the cupboard into the pan
Less is more when blending spices. Mixing too many ingredients without considering how they work together leaves a curry tasting muddled rather than rich. A well-balanced handful of core spices will always deliver better results. Most curries rely on salt, chilli powder, and turmeric as base spices, with others added carefully to build the profile.
4. Not giving the sauce enough time
Serving a curry as soon as the meat or vegetables are cooked deprives the sauce of the time it needs to develop. Simmering your curry gently allows the sauce to become richer, thicker, and deeper in flavour. A sauce is truly ready when you see a thin layer of oil naturally separate and come to the surface.
5. Forgetting to taste as you go
Ingredients vary every time you cook – tomatoes differ in acidity, chillies vary in heat, and seasoning requirements change. Using a clean spoon to taste at different stages allows you to make small, thoughtful adjustments. If a dish feels off, it might need sweetness from honey, acidity from a squeeze of lime, or richness from ghee, rather than just more salt or chilli.
“Cooking a great curry is all about building layers of deep flavour and allowing that flavour to develop over time,” said Shakil Hussain, co-founder at Aagrah Foods. “The main thing is to give yourself enough time; don’t rush. Slow the whole process down and develop an understanding of spice flavour combinations; I promise it will make a huge difference.”
For home cooks looking for a reliable shortcut, Aagrah produces a range of pre-blended tarka cooking pastes available at Ocado, Tesco, Morrisons, Asda, and online at aagrahfoods.com.
