"Rezala vs Korma vs Qorma: Which Chicken Gravy?"

You have a kilo of chicken, a tub of yogurt and guests who asked for "something creamy, not too hot". Three names come to mind: rezala, korma, qorma. They sound interchangeable, and in plenty of homes they are. But open the three recipes in our library side by side and the cooking is quite different, especially in what happens to the onion.

This is a comparison of rezala vs korma vs qorma for the chicken pot, so you can choose before you start frying.

The one-line difference

• Rezala (Bangladeshi, pale, peppery): onions are blended raw with a little water and cooked gently without browning. The gravy stays almost white.
• Korma, Bangladeshi style: sliced onions are fried until crisp, then ground to a paste. That gives a sweetish, nutty, light-brown gravy.
• Qorma, Pakistani style: sliced onions are fried slowly until deep golden brown and stay in the pot as soft strands that melt into the sauce.

Same family, three onion treatments. Everything else follows from that.

Side by side

The cooking times tell you something. Qorma is the slow one because the onion browning takes about 10 minutes of steady stirring and the covered simmer runs 20 to 25 minutes. Korma and rezala lean on pastes, so they move faster.

Rezala: keep it pale on purpose

Our chicken rezala marinates the chicken with half the yogurt, ginger-garlic paste and salt for 30 minutes. The onion paste fries gently in ghee and oil with cardamom and cinnamon, "soft but not browned". Chicken goes in and cooks uncovered on medium heat for about 6 minutes, again without letting the masala colour.

Then comes the part that decides the texture: cashew paste, the remaining yogurt a spoon at a time on low heat, black pepper, a little sugar and plenty of green chillies. A short covered simmer of 15 minutes finishes it.

The recipe's own tip is worth repeating: keep the heat low once the cashew paste goes in, because it can split and lose its creamy look if it boils hard. If you want the pale colour, resist the urge to brown anything. Heat comes from chillies and pepper, not red chilli powder.

Korma: crisp onions first

The Bangladeshi korma does the opposite with its onions. They are sliced, fried until properly crisp, and only then ground. The recipe tip says this is what gives korma "its characteristic sweetish, nutty background", and that matches how it tastes: skip the crisping and you get a flat, one-note gravy.

The chicken marinates 30 minutes with yogurt, ginger-garlic paste and salt, goes into the ghee and oil with whole garam masala (30 seconds, until fragrant), and cooks uncovered for about 6 minutes while you keep the masala pale. The fried onion paste, cashew paste, sugar and green chillies follow, then a covered simmer of about 12 minutes.

Burnt onions are the failure here. Crisp means deep gold at the thinnest edges, not dark brown. Pull them out a shade early, because they keep darkening on the paper towel.

Qorma: the patient pot

The Pakistani chicken qorma skips the grinder. Sliced onions fry for about 10 minutes until deep golden, then ginger-garlic paste and chicken go in for another 7 minutes. Turmeric, red chilli, cardamom and cinnamon get a minute. Then the yogurt rule: take the pot off the heat for a minute, whisk the yogurt smooth, add it a spoonful at a time, stir constantly and return to medium heat.

Cook that yogurt for about 5 minutes until it dries into the masala and oil begins to separate at the edges. Only now add salt and half a cup of hot water, cover, and cook low for 20 to 25 minutes.

If your yogurt splits, our guide to why curry curdles covers temperature and whisking in detail.

Which one should you cook?

A short decision list:

1. Guests who avoid red chilli or dislike dark gravies: rezala. It is the palest, and the peppery heat is easy to adjust by cutting green chillies.
2. You want a slightly sweet, special-occasion gravy: Bangladeshi korma.
3. You want a deeper, more savoury, homestyle gravy and have an hour: Pakistani qorma.
4. No cashews in the house: qorma. It is the only one of the three that does not need cashew paste.
5. Cooking for 12: qorma scales most predictably; see scaling chicken qorma for a crowd.

Mistakes that show up in all three

• Cold yogurt straight into a hot pot. Whisk it, add slowly, keep the heat low. Boiling hard is what splits it.
• Skin-on chicken in the white gravies. The fat leaks out and makes the pale gravy look greasy. If you want a cleaner finish, remove the skin before marinating.
• Under-cooking the chicken because the gravy looks done. Bone-in pieces should read 74 C / 165 F at the thickest point. The rezala recipe says so explicitly.
• Too much water. Add a little hot water, not a cup. These are thick gravies; extra water means boiling it down later and risking a split.

<!-- VERIFY: Origins and "special-occasion" associations of rezala and korma are described only as general regional usage, not sourced. Skin-removal advice is a general tip, not from the recipe data. -->

A plan for one weekend

Friday night: marinate the chicken for the first pot, since 30 minutes works but longer in the fridge tastes better. Saturday: cook the rezala or korma. Sunday: qorma for the next gathering. Compare which one the family finishes first. If you want to see which of the three your cupboard supports tonight, the pantry matcher at degchi.matrixinn.net/#try will tell you.