Cooking 101: Tempering

Tempering is an essential part of Indian cooking. It is used in almost all vegetable, rice, meat and lentil dishes in India. Known as 'tadka', 'baghar', 'vaghar', 'fodni', 'chaukna' in various Indian languages, tempering can be used at the beginning of cooking the dish or also as a garnish.

Tempering
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Tempering begins by heating a small quantity of vegetable oil in a kadhai (if it is used at the beginning of making a dish) or a small tempering spoon/ vessel (if used as a garnish). Whole spices like mustard seeds and cumin seeds are then added and allowed to crackle, If needed other tempering ingredients like asafoetida powder, curry leaves, dried red chillies, garlic, ginger, etc are added last.


Tips for Tempering

Heat the Oil Enough

Make sure the oil is heated enough. Ideally the mustard and cumin seeds should start crackling about 30 seconds after they're put in. This takes some practice to get right, but don't worry after 5 or 6 tries, you'll get it!

Be Safe

When adding the mustard seeds and cumin seeds or whole spices, lower the flame so the hot oil doesn't splatter all over you. Also stand as far away as possible and move back immediately after you add in the spices.

Curry Leaves in Tempering

Curry leaves tend to make hot oil splatter even more than seeds. Well, that's simply because after you wash them, the water stays on them. When water is added to hot oil, it's a splatter explosion! Dry the curry leaves a little and it won't splatter as much. And yes, stay as far away as possible.

Recipes To Try out Tempering:

1. Tuvero no Bhaath
2. Dal Fry
3. Pink Guava Curry

Cooking 101: Frying

For the Cooking 101 series, I thought I'd start with some basic cooking methods or techniques that are essential to Indian cooking. I will cover each technique's definition, the science behind it and the best practices, particularly for Indian food. So next time you read a technique I use, you will know how to best use it! 

Today's technique is frying.

Frying:

Frying is essentially cooking food in a fatty medium. There are many fats that can be used for frying like oils, animal fats etc. Indian cooking primarily uses vegetable oils such as peanut oil, sunflower oil, rice bran oil and olive oil. 

There are two kinds of frying that we use to make our food: deep frying and shallow frying, 

Deep Frying 

Deep Frying

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In deep frying, the item to be cooked is completely submerged in the oil or fat for cooking. So you need a large, deep vessel and lots of oil for deep frying. Samosas, pooris, wadas, pakoras/ bhajiyas all are our eternal favourite fried foods. 

Tips for Deep Frying: 

Testing the Heated Oil

You need to make sure the oil is hot enough. A traditional way to test this (while deep frying) is to put a bit of the batter or snack being fried into the oil. If it rises from the bottom to the top of the oil in less 2-3 seconds, it's hot enough! 

Putting the Items In

Put in the items to be fried from a distance using a long slotted spoon. This will prevent hot oil splattering on you which happens when water comes in contact with hot oil. The hot oil will try to throw the water out. Hence you need to be extra careful when frying stuff with water in the batter or wet stuff.

Frying in Batches:

When you have a large number of items to deep fry, they're best done in small batches. So if I have 10 wadas to fry, I will do in batches of 3 or 4 to the max. This allows them to cook evenly. It also uses lesser oil because less is needed to submerge lesser food items. Allow time between batches for the oil to heat again. 

Recipes for Trying Out Deep Frying: 

1. Wada pav

2. Fresh Toor Kachori

3. Palak Kanda Bhajiya

2. Shallow Frying 

Shallow frying

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Shallow frying is when the food is only partially in contact with the oil. It is usually done on a a flat surface like a tawa (flat iron griddle). It's considered the healthier version of cooking dishes by frying as it needs much less oil for cooking and the food absorbs lesser oil too. Patties, parathas and cutlets are best served by shallow frying till they become crispy. In our home we also shallow fry marinated fish coated in rice flour (recipe of marination here).

Tips for Shallow Frying:

Testing Heated Oil

The oil should be decently hot for shallow frying. There should be a loud sizzling noise when you put the shallow frying item on it to cook. If there isn't, give it some more time to heat. 

Crispy Crusts

Shallow fried items mean crispy crusts. To get the best crispy crusts, heat oil well, lower the flame to medium high and cook one side till done. When you flip over, add some more oil and put the flame on high to heat oil well. You'll get a beautiful golden-brown crust! 

Recipes for Trying Out Shallow Frying:

1. Patties for Ragda Patties

2. Thalipeeth

3. Paranthe wali Gali ke Paranthe 

Cooking 101: The Basics of Cooking Series

Why the basics of cooking series?

While writing recipes, I have understood that there is no way around using technical terms or certain basic assumptions. Though I try to give explanations and keep it simple, I have always had something at the back of my mind that needs to be done. I finally had that 'aha! moment' today. I need to write about the basics of cooking. 

How will a person who has never cooked before get around to feeling more comfortable with it? Simple, by knowing the beauty of each technique and spice that goes into the process and what outcomes it brings. For that I need to write down all this implicit knowledge that we have of cooking. 

I have picked up a lot of knowledge about cooking from my grandma, mom, aai, aaji, bhabhi, professional chefs' articles and recipes. Most of this has been passed down orally or during show and tell. And I WRITE recipes. That's the gap that needs to be filled.

I need to write down why do I feel comfortable when I read a recipe. Why do I know what I know about the steps in a recipe when I read it? These things can't be explained in every recipe. But having explanations of it can make new readers of recipes and budding cooks feel more competent to attempt them. 

So here's writing down the goals of this series that I am attempting. This is to the knowledge of cooking that we know and have not easily expressed in recipes! This goes out to all the first-time cooks to whom I say welcome to magic!