Homemade curry is a deceptively simple dish to prepare and cook, but it is all too easy to overcook the spices or to get the ratios wrong and end up with a bitter-tasting curry. Use some simple tricks to offset the bitterness of an overcooked or poorly blended curry. Curries from different nations need to be treated according to the type of dish you are creating, but the fixes are similar.
Taste the curry sauce and determine the level of bitterness as well as the underlying flavors. Highly bitter curries need more of the bitterness-minimizing elements.
Add salt and sugar to the curry sauce in equal portions, a generous pinch or dash at a time, until the flavor is more balanced. Salt brings out the natural sweetness of curry spice and the sugar will help balance the saltiness and bitterness. Do this two or three times and then go on to the next fix if it's still bitter. Use palm sugar, cane sugar or other sweeteners appropriate for the curry, if you prefer. Table salt, kosher salt or salty fish sauces can work as the salt elements.
Blend in coconut milk, coconut cream, yogurt or sour cream, 1/4 cup at a time, tasting after each addition. If after three additions, the curry is still bitter, the curry needs more items added.
Add 1/4 teaspoon of ground coriander seed or root to the curry sauce and the juice of one lime. Blend this together well and taste it. If the curry is still too bitter, it is likely that the curry blend is too overcooked to be salvaged.