Balti (food)

[4] Balti curries are cooked quickly using vegetable oil rather than ghee, over high heat in the manner of a stir-fry, and any meat is used off the bone.

[9] As such, the name of the food may have originated from the fact that bāltī gosht is cooked in a pot resembling a baltī, the Hindustani word for bucket.

[11] Balti houses typically offer large karack naan bread pieces, to be shared by the whole table.

[12] Balti houses were originally clustered along and behind the main road between Sparkhill and Moseley, to the south of Birmingham city centre.

Outside Britain, a small number of balti houses are in Ireland and many other English-speaking countries, particularly Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

Since the late 1990s, British supermarkets have stocked a growing range of prepacked balti meals, and the balti restaurant sector has since faced increasing competition from the retail sector and from changes in customer tastes, along with other traditional South Asian and Indian restaurants.