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How to cook Indian food deliciously: some tips and tricks

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  • Posted 5 years ago
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Indian food enriched by a wide variety of spices is taking up the culinary world by it’s mesmerizing taste. Many Indian restaurants and Indian food corners are already established across the world. Also, some more Indian restaurants are on the verge of featuring themselves for food lovers across the globe, getting them to fall in love with the taste of authentic Indian curries and flat breads. This is because Indian cuisines generously utilize nutritious greens and cooked meat accompanied by a diverse group of spices to convey our desirable flavors. But as savory as Indian food sounds and tastes, there is much more you need to smartly and carefully handle while cooking Indian homely food.

If your taste buds are biased towards Indian homely food and if you love cooking, then below are a couple of tips and tricks to aid you excel in your culinary skills:

1. Preparing thin, soft chapatis

Wheat flat cake, popularly known as chapati are an inseparable dish of the Indian delicacies. They taste perfect when served with adequately spiced up, tasty curries and gravies, both vegetarian and non-vegetarian. Also, the best part of chapatis is that you can enjoy them for both lunch and dinner. However, it is probably the most trickiest challenge faced by many, especially the beginners, to roll out and prepare a thin, soft and of course, a perfectly round chapati. For kneading soft dough, ensure to add lukewarm water along with some amount of milk in your dough. Let the dough to rest for 15 minutes before rolling it out into flat, thin discs.

To roll out round chapatis, keep rotating the piece of dough while rolling it out with a rolling pin. This ensures that the rolled out dough gets an even thickness all over and has a round shape. But, if this one is your pet peeve, then here is a quick simple trick. Position a small, clean, circular steel plate and press it precisely and hardly in to the rolled out dough. And then, neatly cut down the extra dough that are exposed, to get a perfectly rolled out circular disc.

2. Making of rice pudding(Kheer)

Kheer is a rice pudding made by boiling rice or vermicelli in milk with sugar that is enriched in flavor by generously adding cardamom, cashews, raisins and pistachios to it. But again, making a delicious kheer is a time consuming recipe. Most of the times while preparing kheer, it so happens that the pudding might tend to thicken too much and stick to the vessel. To avoid this, just add a half a glass of water to the pudding before adding milk and cook the kheer on a low flame. Use the most heavily coated or thick bottomed vessel that you have, for preparing this sweet delicacy. Also, make sure that the kheer does not over boil and fall out of the vessel. To know step by step procedure for making rice kheer, Click Here.

3. Cooking of dal

When it comes to dal, we all are well aware that it is the heart of Indian cuisine. To make your dal extra flavorful, roast the lentils well before cooking them. Make sure to heat the oil adequately before adding the spices for tempering, that gives a yummm taste to your dal. You can also use the excess water used for cooking dal to prepare rasam, that can be enjoyed with appams and idlis. You can also add the excess water used for boiling dal for chapati dough to make it flavorful. The leftover dal can be used to make tasty dal parathas. Bored of preparing the same dal everyday? To know the recipes of other varieties of dal that you can treat yourself with, Click Here.

4. Deep fried food

Fried food items like pooris, bhaturas, potato pops and vadas are savored across the nation. While cooking pakoras or vegetable fritters, add two tablespoons of hot oil and half a tablespoon of baking soda to the batter. While making aloo tikkis, ensure that the potatoes are boiled perfectly. Mashed potatoes mixed with a proportionate amount of corn flour and then coated uniformly with bread crumbs, should be refrigerated for a while before frying the tikkis. This assures that the patties don’t have a gooey texture. “How to make crispy aloo tikkis?” Click Here.

While kneading the dough for pooris, don’t forget to add a little amount of rice flour to the dough so that it brings in the crispiness in your pooris.

5. Curries and gravy

Curries are one of the signature dishes among other Indian delicacies. For a gravy that requires a rich tomato flavor, always make sure to use ripe, red tomatoes so that your gravies/curries retains both the color as well as the tangy taste of tomato. Remember to always fry the masala for your curry on a low flame, so that it gives a strong taste  that activates your taste buds. The unique taste of each different spice will either make up or ruin any gravy. So, make sure that you have got ample amount of all spices. Ensure to purchase all spices that comes from a well known brand and make sure you add the spices rightly as prescribed in the recipe so that the curry is neither too spicy or too bland to taste.

6. Cooking meat

While cooking meat for curries, biryanis or for starters, make it a point to cook it on a low flame. Also, ensure to cover the dish while cooking so that both the aroma as well as the flavor of the dish is sealed. Cook the meat till it is gentle. If you are planning to cook meat for the following day, then marinate it with salt, turmeric and a dash of vinegar and place it in freezer to make sure that that the meat stays fresh. Partially frozen meats are easy to cut and slice. Also, make sure that you take out the meat from your freezer half an hour before cooking. This ensures that the meat cooks sooner.

7. Rice cooking

To avoid the boiled rice from turning sticky, add a little bit of oil to it before cooking. To bring in a crazy twist in your regular white rice meal, you can add some greens along with the right spices and fried onions, so that you treat yourself with lip smacking pulao that will definitely leave you craving for some more. Here is the procedure that will rightly guide you in preparing a delicious pulao.

8. South Indian food

The first picture that gets created in our mind when anyone talks about south Indian food is the white, fluffy, soft idlis. People usually love idlis with spicy cooked lentil curry, popularly known as sambhar, along with coconut chutney. For making soft idlis, add an appropriate amount of cooked rice while preparing the batter. South Indian meals commonly employ a lots of coconut in almost all their dishes. So, save an ample volume of shredded coconut in your fridge, if you ought to prepare a lot of food items  particularly from this cuisine. Use the best sambhar powder available or prepare one at home for making a tasty, tangy, spicy curry. Make sure you keep ingredients like, curry leaves and asfoetida, handy at home that are usually used in south Indian foods.

9. Cooking in tandoor oven

Now, the tandoor might be an archaic oven for many. But, it surely is a very time honored culinary tool in North Indian villages, especially in Punjab. The tandoori roti is an integral part of the Punjabi delicacies. Marinating the breads and meats is the most crucial part while cooking in tandoor. Add a little gram flour/besan to the marination, prior to dipping cottage cheese, vegetables or meat that you would grill on the tandoor. The flour makes the marination bind perfectly with the meat giving it a rich tandoor taste.

10. Leftovers too can be a feast

By the end of the day, you would be wondering as to “How will I use these leftover food for tomorrow?” Here is the perfect way to fix this problem. If you have the left over mashed potatoes that you used for preparing aloo parathas/aloo tikkis the previous night, you can smartly use it for making a vegetable toast for your morning breakfast. If you have the left over cooked rice, then you surely can make a variety of flavored rice like lemon rice and puliyogare that will just light up your day.

So, after reading through this blog you might be wanting to just get up and try out at-least one of the above tips and tricks to prepare a lip smacking Indian delicacy for yourself. But, at times you might not have enough time to cook a delicious meal by yourself. So, why not enjoy the same delicious, tasty home cooked food right at your place.

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