Vindaloo Curry Powder: The Goan Dish, the Blend, and the Heat

Vindaloo curry powder is a spice blend made to season vindaloo, the Goan dish whose name comes from the Portuguese carne de vinha d’alhos, meat marinated in wine vinegar and garlic.¹ The three blends compared below share a core of chiles, cumin, black pepper, cinnamon and cloves; the USDA’s specification for plain curry powder, by contrast, names no chile.²³⁴⁵ The vinegar that defines the dish goes into the marinade, not the powder.¹⁶ This page covers where vindaloo comes from, what goes into the blend, how hot it is, and how to use it.

At a glance

Where vindaloo comes from

Food historian Lizzy Collingham, writing for Saveur, traces vindaloo to carne de vinha d’alhos, a Portuguese dish of meat marinated in wine vinegar and garlic, which reached India with Portuguese explorers in the 15th century.¹ India had no wine vinegar, so Franciscan priests made their own from palm wine, and local cooks added tamarind, black pepper, cinnamon and cardamom.¹ Chiles, Collingham notes, were themselves part of Portugal’s legacy, brought to India from the Americas.¹ Daily Maverick’s Tony Jackman likewise describes Goan cooks swapping palm vinegar for the red wine, and defines vindaloo as meat, usually pork, marinated in vinegar and garlic.⁶ Savory Spice sums it up as a dish from Goa influenced by Portuguese cuisine.²

On the meat, Collingham says Christian Goan cooks, free of caste and religious restrictions, were happy to make the beef and pork dishes that expatriates loved.¹

When vindaloo traveled to Britain, it changed. Collingham writes that it became another hot curry, its balance of spices lost under a blistering excess of chiles.¹ Jackman puts it the same way: the British version came to be understood as simply an extremely hot curry.⁶ Britannica notes, more generally, that curry powder itself was adapted by British settlers in India, whereas Indian cooks prepare their spice mixtures, or masalas, at home.⁷

What goes in it: three blends compared

There is no standard recipe, and the three versions below differ widely.

Five ingredients appear in all three: chiles, cumin, black pepper, cinnamon and cloves. None of the three lists vinegar. For comparison, the USDA’s purchase specification for plain curry powder lists turmeric, coriander, fenugreek, cinnamon, cumin, black pepper, ginger and cardamom, with no chile.⁵

Flavor, heat and the compounds behind it

How hot a vindaloo powder is depends entirely on the blend:

Savory Spice recommends adding extra cayenne for a spicier result.² Behind the heat, the aroma is warm and sharp, with cumin’s earthiness, the sweetness of cinnamon and the medicinal edge of cloves; that description is ours. The compounds belong to the individual spices:

How it is used

The main job is the dish. Savory Spice suggests about 1 teaspoon of its blend per pound of beef, pork, poultry or fish, and also suggests it for chicken, rice and roasted vegetables.² Silk Road Spices says it can go into any recipe that calls for curry powder.⁴

To cook a vindaloo in the Goan spirit, the vinegar and garlic matter as much as the powder: the original marinade was wine vinegar and garlic, later palm vinegar in Goa.¹⁶ Pork is the traditional choice.⁶ Marinating the meat in the vinegar, garlic and spice mixture before cooking is common practice rather than a sourced instruction.

Buying and storage

Read the ingredient list: blends vary from medium to very hot, and some add salt.² No sourced shelf-life figure for vindaloo powder was found. As with any ground blend, keep it sealed, dark and cool, and replace it when the aroma fades; that is general kitchen practice.

Safety

Lead in spices. A New York City health department review of spice samples found detectable lead in more than half of them.¹² The abstract does not report results for vindaloo powder specifically.

Health claims. Vindaloo powder is often credited with preventing Alzheimer’s disease and cancer (through turmeric’s curcumin and chile’s capsaicin) and lowering blood pressure (through cardamom). No regulator summary or systematic review supporting those claims was found. NCCIH says there is not enough evidence to conclude that turmeric or curcumin is beneficial for any health purpose,¹³ and only one of the three blends above contains turmeric at all.²

Substitutes and comparisons

In our judgment, Madras curry powder or plain curry powder with added cayenne makes the closest stand-in. No source gives a tested ratio, so start with the same amount and adjust the heat (Method). See vindaloo vs. Madras curry powder, is curry powder spicy?, too much curry powder and Portuguese spices. The individual spices: cumin, coriander, fenugreek, black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, turmeric and ginger.