Currywurst pot is our go-to recipe for the days when we are craving currywurst but have no appetite for separate chips, separate sauce and three dirty pans. In the Thermomix® we cook the curry tomato sauce directly in the mixing bowl and stir in the sliced Bockwurst sausage at the end. One pot, one pan, twenty minutes.
We first made this pot because our son, after a long day at school, wanted “something with currywurst” and we had no desire for the classic setup: fry the sausage, deep-fry the chips, make the curry sauce separately. It all comes together in one go, tastes like currywurst and goes with rice, potatoes or simply bread. We now cook this recipe two or three times a month, often as a way to use up an opened pack of Bockwurst from the fridge.
Currywurst Pot with the Thermomix®
Ingredients 0 / 13 ✓
- 2 onions
- 1 chilli dried
- 20 g rapeseed oil
- 400 g Bockwurst sausages
- 2 tsp curry powder
- 2 tbsp tomato puree
- 400 g chopped tinned tomatoes
- 200 g apple juice
- 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 1 tsp vegetable stock powder
- 3 tsp sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp pepper freshly ground
Instructions 0 / 6
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1
Chop onions and chilli.
Peel onions, halve them and place in the mixing bowl along with the chilli. Chop for 5 sec / speed 5 and push down with the spatula.
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2
Sweat.
Add oil to the mixing bowl and cook for 3 min / Varoma / speed 1.
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3
Slice the sausage.
Meanwhile, slice the sausages and fry in a pan.
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4
Heat the curry base.
Add curry powder and tomato puree to the mixing bowl and heat for 1 min / Varoma / speed 1 without the measuring cup.
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5
Cook.
Add chopped tomatoes, apple juice, vinegar, stock powder, sugar, salt and pepper to the mixing bowl and cook for 5 min / 100°C / reverse direction / speed 1.
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6
Add the sausage.
Add sausage to the mixing bowl and mix for 10 sec / reverse direction / speed 1.
Tip: If you prefer less heat, leave out the chilli or use only part of it.
This is best served with rice and a fresh salad, but chips work brilliantly alongside it too.
Video
Nutrition per serving
Why curry powder belongs in the pot after the tomato puree
The most important step in the whole recipe is step 4: heat curry powder and tomato puree together for 1 minute at Varoma, speed 1, without the measuring cup. This is not a gimmick. It is the point at which the recipe either tastes like a genuine currywurst sauce or like a bland tomato soup with curry powder stirred in on top.
Curry powder is a blend of turmeric, coriander, fenugreek, cumin, pepper and, depending on the brand, ginger, mustard seed and chilli. These flavours are locked in essential oils. They only open up when the powder hits hot fat. We do not fry the curry powder directly in oil, though, because it burns immediately and turns bitter. Tomato puree is the perfect bridge: it contains its own oils but also has acidity and water that protect the curry from burning. One minute is enough. After that the aroma is fully open, the tomato puree has lost its raw edge and tastes sweet and concentrated. Only then do we add the chopped tomatoes, apple juice and the rest.
Anyone who skips this step and adds everything at once ends up with a sauce that is red and contains curry but tastes flat. The five minutes of cooking time at the end are not enough to take the raw edge off the tomato puree or to open up the curry.
Bockwurst fried separately in the pan, not in the mixing bowl
In the original recipe, the 400 g of Bockwurst sausages go into a non-stick pan as sliced rounds, not into the mixing bowl. There are two reasons for this that matter in everyday cooking. First: Bockwurst is already cooked. We do not need to cook it through, we just want it warm and lightly browned on the cut surfaces. Two minutes in the pan, nothing more.
Second: if the Bockwurst were to cook in the mixing bowl, the reverse direction setting would still put micro-pressure on the sausage slices and the sauce would turn murky and greasy from the sausage fat. Frying in the pan keeps that fat there and leaves the sauce clean. We add the sausage slices right at the end and mix them in for 10 seconds on reverse direction, speed 1. That is enough to warm everything through. If you do not want a second pan, you can steam the sausage slices in the Varoma attachment while the sauce cooks. They will not be browned that way, but the pot stays the only vessel.
How hot we make the sauce without children refusing to eat it
The dried chilli in the recipe is intended as seasoning, not as the main flavour. We chop it with the onions for five seconds at speed 5. This distributes the heat evenly. With small dried chillies (such as pul biber, bird’s eye or dried peperoncini), half or even a third is plenty if children are eating. If you like it hotter, add the whole chilli and throw in a fresh one as well.
The 3 tsp of sugar in the recipe are not there to make the sauce sweet. They are there to balance the acidity from the tinned tomatoes and the apple cider vinegar. Without the sugar the sauce tastes sharp and sour. With it, the flavour is rounded and distinctly currywurst-like. We use plain white sugar, not brown sugar, because brown sugar pushes things too far towards caramel and masks the curry note.
Which curry powder actually makes a difference
The 2 tsp of curry powder is the variable on which the whole recipe stands or falls. The standard supermarket jar curry powder works, but it often tastes of turmeric plus a bit of pepper and little else. Over the years we have tried various types and settled on Madras curry powder, because it contains more coriander and fenugreek and brings the sauce closer to the classic chip-shop currywurst flavour.
What also works: a tablespoon of homemade curry date dip mixture, or a blend of 1 tsp mild and 1 tsp hot curry powder. If you make this recipe regularly, it is worth moving to a better-quality powder. Opened jars of curry powder lose their aroma significantly after eight weeks, so we buy small jars and replace them regularly.
Apple juice instead of water is not a quirk
The 200 g of apple juice in the recipe is a deliberate choice, not water and not stock. Apple juice brings fruit acidity and residual sweetness into the sauce at the same time. That is exactly the component that sits inside the chip-shop currywurst flavour without you being able to identify it straight away. We use clear apple juice from a carton. Cloudy apple juice works just as well but gives a slightly rounder result.
If you have no apple juice in the house, replace it with 200 g of water plus half a tablespoon of apricot jam or a teaspoon of honey. It is not quite the same, but it comes close enough. With plain water the sauce tastes like a rather limp tomato sauce with curry, and something is clearly missing.
What to do when the sauce is too thin or too thick
We have gone wrong in both directions. Too thin happens when the tinned tomatoes are particularly watery or when the apple juice dilutes things further. Solution: cook the sauce open for a little longer, one extra minute at 100 degrees, speed 1, without the measuring cup. Two to three minutes is usually enough. The sauce will then be thick enough to cling to a bed of rice without clumping. If needed, stir in half a teaspoon of tomato puree.
Too thick happens when the tomato puree in step 4 sits on Varoma too long and loses water through evaporation, or when the curry powder is measured heaped rather than level. Solution: add a splash of apple juice or water and stir for 30 seconds at speed 1. We are aiming for the consistency of thick ketchup, not tomato soup and not tomato paste.
Rice, potatoes, bread or chips as a side
We most often serve this currywurst pot on basmati rice cooked in the Thermomix®, because we can steam it in the Varoma at the same time as the sauce. That is the version where truly only one appliance runs and the only things to wash up are the mixing bowl, the chopping board and the small pan for the sausage. Cook the rice, fry the sausage, pour the sauce over. Done.
When we eat it more as a stew, we add two floury potatoes cut into 1 cm cubes to the sauce as soon as the chopped tomatoes go in, then cook for twelve minutes instead of five at 100 degrees, reverse direction, speed 1. The potatoes cook through and thicken the sauce further. If you like, add a roughly chopped carrot or half a pepper as well. The pot then moves away from a pure sauce character and becomes a proper stew. Oven-baked chips work well at the weekend, especially for children. We dip the chips into the sauce and eat the sausage slices with a fork alongside.
In terms of flavour, this pot sits somewhere between a classic currywurst and a mild tomato curry stew. It does not replace the chip-shop currywurst one for one, because there the sausage lies directly under the sauce and picks up a char-grilled note. In the pot, the sauce is the main element and the sausage is the protein. That makes it a dish in its own right, not a poor substitute.
Leftovers the next day and freezing
This pot tastes better on the second day than it does fresh. The curry flavours have continued to infuse the sauce overnight in the fridge, the Bockwurst has given off a little salt and the sauce tastes rounder. We often make a double batch and eat the rest the following lunchtime warmed up with bread. In the fridge the pot keeps well for three days in a sealed glass container.
Freezing works, with one caveat. The sauce itself freezes without any problem and keeps its flavour after thawing. The Bockwurst slices, however, turn rubbery because the sausage meat draws water when frozen. If we know that a portion is going into the freezer, we cook the sauce without the sausage and freeze only the sauce. The Bockwurst goes in fresh when we thaw the portion. Reheating works directly in a saucepan over a medium heat, stirring. In the Thermomix® four minutes at 80 degrees, speed 1 is enough.
Want more currywurst ideas? We have the classic Thermomix® currywurst recipe with sauce for grilled bratwurst, and a curry risotto with apple for everyone who loves the curry-apple combination. If you still have a craving for curry, our curry date dip has a sweet curry sauce that is great with crudites.
What sets our pot apart from other currywurst stews
Serve with: white bread, potato salad and bread rolls.
Other Thermomix® versions mix Bockwurst, chicken frankfurters and mushrooms into a stew with plum juice, or build a bake with cheese on top. We keep the sauce as the star and add the Bockwurst separately so that the sausage fat does not cloud it. Apple juice rather than plum juice, because the fruit sweetness sits closer to the authentic chip-shop flavour and does not push any single note too hard. We bloom the curry deliberately with the tomato puree before any liquid goes in. That is what makes the difference between a flat tomato sauce and a proper currywurst sauce.
