Indian Recipes
Pork Vindaloo
Goa’s famous hot and sour curry: boneless pork shoulder marinated in a paste of toasted chillies, spices, garlic and vinegar, then slowly braised.
- Serves 4
- Marinate 2 hrs or overnight
- Cook about 2 hrs
- Indian
Method
Toast the dried chillies, cumin, coriander seeds, peppercorns, cloves and cinnamon in a dry frying pan for 1–2 minutes until fragrant. Cool, then grind to a fine powder.
Blend the ground spices with the garlic, ginger, vinegar, sugar and 1 teaspoon of salt to a smooth paste. Mix half the paste with the pork in a non-metallic bowl, cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, ideally overnight. Keep the rest of the paste covered in the fridge.
Heat the oil in a heavy casserole and fry the onions over a medium heat for 15 minutes until deep golden. Add the turmeric and the rest of the paste and fry, stirring, for 3–4 minutes until it darkens and smells toasty.
Add the pork and its marinade and cook over a high heat for 5 minutes, stirring. Add the tomatoes and hot water, bring to a simmer, cover and cook gently for 1¼–1½ hours until the pork is very tender.
Uncover for the last 15 minutes to reduce the sauce until thick. Taste: it should be hot, sour and slightly sweet; add a splash more vinegar or a pinch of sugar or salt to balance. Serve with plain rice.
Tip: tap a step to tick it off as you cook.
Rate this recipe
Tried it? Rate it.
The readers’ average appears here once 5 readers have rated it.
One vote per recipe per browser, and you can change it. We keep only the stars: no name, e-mail or IP address. How ratings work
Chef’s notes
- This is properly hot. For a milder curry use 4 dried chillies and add 1 teaspoon of paprika for colour.
- Vindaloo improves overnight and freezes well.
How this recipe was developed
The old Cookeryonline page reproduced a published recipe, so we wrote a new one. We started from Anjum Anand’s pork vindaloo for BBC Food, the best-rated version we found on a major UK site, and made it a little hotter and longer-cooked.
- Vinegar spice paste. Anjum Anand grinds whole cumin, coriander, peppercorns, cardamom, cloves and cinnamon and mixes them with a paste of ginger, garlic, chillies and white wine vinegar to marinate the pork (BBC Food, 4.6/5 from 13 ratings).
- Pork shoulder. She uses pork shoulder (with a little belly); we use all shoulder, which stays succulent through a longer braise.
- Dried chillies, toasted spices. Our changes: dried red chillies and dry-toasting the spices give a deeper, hotter Goan-style paste; tasting for hot, sour and sweet at the end is our tip.
Sources we compared (ratings as shown on each site on 31 October 2026):
This is an original Cookeryonline recipe written in our own words. Ingredient choices and techniques are credited above; no source text has been copied.