(repost from 2015)

I first tried cooking an Indian dish when I was a teenager, and it was an unmitigated disaster.  Despite that early and unpleasant experience, I’ve really enjoyed cooking Indian food for some years, and thought I’d share some of my wisdom, such as it is  :).

What’s comforting about making Indian food is that the meats and produce are pretty much the same as what we have in the West, and that the cooking techniques are basic, if sometime tedious, like stirring onions continuously for 20 minutes.

To my mind, there are four principal differences between Indian and Western cooking:  (1) spices and how they’re used, (2) the use of dhal (legumes/pulses), (3) the breads, and (4) sweets.  This is a long post about spices………..

One note about spices in general:  If you can, buy whole spices and grind them yourself.  Whole spices retain their flavor much longer than ground spices, and it’s easy-peasy to grind them — just use a coffee grinder:

And two notes about Indian spices:

(1)  If you can, buy them at an Indian market.  Not only are they likely to be fresher (who knows how long that bottle of ground cumin has been sitting on the shelf at Safeway), but also significantly cheaper.  I did an informal survey, and the spices at Safeway were between five and 10 times as expensive.

(2)  Indian spices want to be cooked.  That is, they’re rarely used raw.  Most Indian recipes call for the spices (whole or ground) to be cooked in oil as one of the preliminary steps in the recipe, and when they’re not, the spices should be dry-fried.  One example is garam masala, a spice mix which is sometimes used during the cooking process, but is sometimes sprinkled over a finished dish.

These are mostly pictures of Indian spices, which I’ve put into categories from “Must-Haves” to “Exotic,” with a few categories in-between, and “I Forgot These,” with a few notes.  My notes are limited to clearing up things that the giant ball of confusion aka The Internet wasn’t helpful for.  I’ve looked up the Hindi names for most of them.

1) Must-Haves:  These are the Big Five — most Indian dishes will use at least some of these, although most will also call for other spices.  Clockwise from the top, coriander seed/dhania, dried red pepper/lal mirch, ground turmeric/haldi, fennel seed/saunf, cumin seed/jeera.

Notes: Although some other Asian cuisines use fresh turmeric root, Indian cooking doesn’t that I know of.  As for the dried red peppers, they are just for heat and not so much for flavor, so you can substitute red pepper flakes or cayenne, or probably Tabasco, although I haven’t tried that  🙂

2)  Tier Two:  These are almost as commonly used.  Yellow mustard seed, black mustard seed (both rai), cardamom seed/elaichi, cinnamon/dalchini,

Notes:  I can’t tell the difference in a dish between yellow and black mustard seeds….some recipes call for one, others call for t’other, and some don’t make any distinction.  Mustard seeds are always used whole and fried in oil, and they have to be added to the oil before any other spices, and be cooked until they pop.  Be careful because as they pop they will cause the oil to splatter.

Indian cinnamon is “false cinnamon” or “cassia”, the bark of Cinnamonum cassia, in contrast to “true” cinnamon from Cinnamonum zylanicum, but it makes no difference.

Cardamom seeds…..see below.

3) Tier Three:  Green cardamom pods/choti (small) elaichi, black cardamom pods/badi (big) elaichi,  dried sour mango slice/amchoor, black peppercorns/kala mirch, mace/javetri, bay/tej patta, and nutmeg/jaiphul in the middle:

Notes:  Green and black cardamom pods are often used whole, especially in rice dishes like biryanis.  They aren’t meant to be eaten, but no one ever died from biting into them.  Two green cardomom pods equal one black one for cooking.

Amchoor is used a souring ingredient, similar to tamarind/imli.  I don’t know of any recipe that uses the slices as-is….usually it’s ground in the same way you would spices.

Mace/javetri is the outer membrane of the nutmeg seed, and has a similar flavor.  Nutmeg is….well, nutmeg!

Indian bay is a completely different species from the Bay Laurel usually used in Western cooking.  It’s the dried leaves of cassia.  It has a similar flavor, but is much milder than Bay Laurel.

4) Exotics:  These are spices that aren’t used in many recipes, but according to what I’ve learned, are essential in the ones that do.  Carom/lovage seeds/ajwain, nigella seeds/kallonji, black cumin, and white poppy seeds/khas-khas.

Full disclosure:  I bought carom/ajwain and white poppy seeds in anticipation of using them in recipes, but haven’t done so yet.

Just one note: black cumin (which isn’t black) tastes nothing like regular cumin, so that’s not a good substitute.  And there’s no good substitute for kallonji, which has a taste all of its own.

5 D’oh!  Things I Forgot:  My rather pitiful excuse is that these live in a different cupboard.  Cloves/laung, asafoetida/heeng, fenugreek/methi seeds, and saffron/kesar.

Cloves, sometimes used whole and sometimes used ground, definitely belong in the “must-haves” category.  The rest IME aren’t used as much.  How could I have forgotten fenugreek, my favorite Indian spice?

-R