Curry is a word people in the West use to basically categorize every Indian dish. While that’s reinforced a lot in restaurants and cooking shows, the idea that curry is a dish is just not true.
Curry powder and curry leaves are ingredients that are sometimes used in Indian cooking, but using them alone doesn’t make something a curry.
Every Indian dish has an actual name, and if you go searching for curry in India, you might be disappointed.
Indian food varies from region to region, and even family to family. If you go to India and visit someone’s home, you’ll see that their family has a specific garam masala mix, which is a blend of a lot of different spices, and no two families are the same.
But in no region will you find a dish called curry, so you should probably learn the actual names of the dishes and ingredients before your trip. Even if you don’t go to India, if you love the food, you should learn the names anyway!
Another misconception about Indian cuisine is chai. In the western world, chai is a type of tea. But, in Hindi, it actually just means tea. So when you go to India, you will see a lot of different types of chai, so make sure you ask what each chai is and try to try them all!
