thumb|Balti gosht with lamb in the thin pressed-steel balti bowl, in the United Kingdom
A balti or bāltī gosht (, ) is a type of curry within the United Kingdom served in a thin, pressed-steel wok called a balti bowl. 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. Balti sauce is based on garlic and onions, with spices including turmeric and garam masala. The dish was developed in Birmingham, England in the 1970s. A region of Birmingham with many balti restaurants has become known as the Balti Triangle. An application was made to the European Union to make "Birmingham Balti" a traditional speciality guaranteed product; the application failed because the allowed variations were not precisely defined.
Origin
Baltistan
thumb|upright|It is claimed that balti was invented in [[Birmingham. A balti house is shown. Adil's restaurant in Stoney Lane, Sparkbrook, a district of Birmingham, founded in 1977, called itself "the home of Balti Cuisine", stating that its dishes followed the traditions of Northern Kashmir. However, the Canadian food writer Colleen Taylor Sen states that balti's origins are unclear, as the food eaten in Baltistan "bears no resemblance" to balti curry.
Balti cooking pot
Sen suggests instead that the name of the food may have originated from the fact that it is cooked in a pot named a baltī, similar to a karahi. The word "balti" is the Hindi for "bucket", from the Portuguese of the same meaning. It is claimed that the thin steel balti wok was, like the curry, invented and manufactured in Birmingham in the 1970s, differing from traditional heavy cast iron cooking pots. The scholar of food Parama Roy, citing Sardar, adds that the success of the marketing effort "is evidenced by the publication of the Balti Bible by Pat Chapman". The historian of food Lizzie Collingham and the Oxford English Dictionary concur that Pakistani restaurateurs invented balti in Birmingham. In 2014, the Indian cook Madhur Jaffrey described the balti style of cooking as a "craze with no authentic origins which will slowly die as people's tastes turn to more complex dishes".
Collingham writes that despite the supposed Kashmir origin, "the restaurant balti unashamedly makes a virtue out of restaurant short cuts." Some 50 forcing many restaurants to close. Most reopened by the beginning of 2006 but by 2023 only four remained.
Since the late 1990s, British supermarkets have stocked a growing range of prepacked balti meals, and the balti restaurant sector has faced increasing competition both from retail and from changes in customer tastes.
Application for EU protected status
In 2012, the Birmingham Balti Association applied to the European Union to make "Birmingham Balti" a traditional speciality guaranteed (TSG) product, claiming that two features made it distinctive, namely cooking with vegetable oil, and incorporating each ingredient separately while the stir-frying. The application was pursued until 2016 but failed. The reason for rejecting the application was that the dish was not cooked to a standard recipe, or as the EU stated: