Curry Leaves

Murraya koenigii

Plant family: Rutaceae

Curry leaves are extremely fragrant, an essential component of South Indian cuisine, and can be used in a wide array of dishes. We absolutely love curry leaves and cook with them often, but they can be hard to find outside of a well-stocked Indian grocery store. Thankfully, curry leaves are easy to grow in Central Texas. And the curry tree is one of our favorite plants!

Growing Curry Leaf Trees

These subtropical trees grow well in Texas. They make nice container plants that can be brought in during winter for harvesting leaves year-round or can be planted in the ground. Just give them some time to settle in before a freeze, mulch them well, and they'll come back from the roots in the spring.

They usually get about a shrubby 4-5 ft tall before they freeze back down again. Here is one that we mulch and don't cover. It always comes back.

And here is one that we have been covering over the winter for several years. It still drops all its leaves during freezes, but grows back much quicker in the spring than the others. We call this plant the curry monster. The cardinals like living in there.

Pruning Curry Trees

Most people like to keep their curry trees bushy so they produce an abundance of leaves. To do this, just chop off the tops of the branches to shape your tree as desired. Curry trees are quite hardy and will quickly shoot out new growth from where they were cut, resulting in a bushier tree.

Propagating Curry Trees

Well-established curry trees will grow wide and shrubby, making new growth by suckers, which can then be dug up to be new plants. However we propagate our curry trees by seed. We pull apart the fleshy black part of the fruit and plant the green seeds fresh.

Cooking with Curry Leaves

Use curry leaves like bay leaves and add them whole when cooking lentils, soups, stews, and rice dishes. Or our favorite way to work with them is to simmer them in oil with onions, mustard seeds, and cumin seeds, then add whatever vegetables you want, and include other spices like garlic, ginger, coriander seeds, turmeric, paprika, fenugreek leaves. We also like powdering curry leaves and making our own spice blends, infused oils, and infused honeys.

We often have curry tree babies available, depending on the season. Here's how to find our plants.