Spices and tasteમસાલા અને સ્વાદ
Most of what goes wrong with the taste of a dish is a matter of order and quantity rather than a missing ingredient. These answers cover the rescues, when each spice goes into the vaghar, and how to keep a masala smelling of something.
Ingredient substitutesUse the tool for thisThe sabzi has gone too salty. What actually works?
Only two things really work — dilution and bulk; everything else just masks it. Add more of whatever the dish is made of: more potato and water in a rasa sabzi, more tomato or onion, more dal and water, or cook a second unsalted batch and stir the two together. Two or three spoons of thick curd, or a little malai, blunts the edge in a kadhi or gravy, because fat and dairy coat the tongue. Lemon juice or a little jaggery or sugar distracts the palate but removes no salt. The famous raw potato trick barely works — a potato draws in salt only in proportion to the water it absorbs, and in twenty minutes that is almost nothing. A ball of dough or a slice of bread is the same story. If it is badly over-salted, the honest answer is one thing: make a second unsalted batch and combine them, or serve it with plain rice, rotli and curd.
I have put in too much chilli. How do I cool it down?
Use fat and dairy, because the heat in chilli is capsaicin, which dissolves in fat and not in water. Stir in two or three spoons of thick curd, a little malai or cream, some milk, or a spoon of ghee; in a dry sabzi, ground peanut or coconut does the same job. Half a teaspoon of sugar or jaggery at a time pulls the edge down, and lemon juice helps too. Then add bulk — more potato, tomato, dal or water — because chilli cannot be taken out, only spread thinner. Drinking water with a hot meal only moves the heat around your mouth; curd, chaas or milk work. Next time remember that the heat and the colour come from different chillies. Kashmiri and Byadgi types give deep red colour with mild heat, while thin Guntur and Reshampatti types give heat with less colour, so a mix gets you a red dish you can still eat.
The dal or kadhi has gone too sour. What do I do?
Balance it with sweetness and fat first, then dilute. Stir half to one teaspoon of jaggery or sugar into a bowl of dal and simmer two minutes, and it takes off more sourness than you would expect — and in Gujarati cooking that sweetness belongs there anyway. A spoon of ghee, or a little milk in a kadhi, softens sourness the way fat softens chilli. If it is still sharp, add bulk — more cooked dal, water and a little extra salt, or more besan and water in a kadhi — because sourness is a concentration and more liquid lowers it. A pinch of baking soda neutralises acid chemically, but use no more than a pinch per litre; any more gives a soapy taste and a dull, flat dish, and in dal it will froth up. The usual cause is sour curd going into the kadhi, or the dish standing out in warm weather, where it keeps souring by the hour.
The dish tastes flat. Something is missing, but what?
Check four things in this order: salt, acid, fat, aroma. Flatness is almost always salt, so before anything else add a quarter teaspoon, stir and taste again, because under-salted food tastes of nothing in particular. If the salt is right and it is still dull, it nearly always wants acid — lemon, a little amchur, kokum or tamarind, or a spoon of curd. Then fat: a teaspoon of ghee, or a fresh vaghar of mustard, hing and curry leaves poured over the top, wakes a dal or sabzi at that stage more than any ground spice will. Last, aroma — coriander leaves, a pinch of garam masala, crushed kasuri methi or a little grated ginger. Add one thing at a time and taste in between. The mistake is reaching straight for more chilli or garam masala, which makes the dish louder but no less flat, because what it lacked was salt and sourness.
When does each spice go in, and why do ground spices burn?
In a vaghar the order follows how long each thing needs. Oil first, properly hot; then mustard seeds until they pop, then cumin, then hing for two or three seconds, then curry leaves and dry chilli, then ginger, garlic and green chilli, then onion. Ground spices go in right at the end, with the flame turned low, and only for twenty to thirty seconds before the tomato, water or vegetable follows. They burn because they are fine powder with nothing to protect them — no seed coat, no oil-filled interior — so the whole particle reaches oil temperature at once. Turmeric and chilli powder are the most delicate and can scorch in ten seconds, and burnt turmeric is bitter in a way nothing covers. If the kadai looks too hot, lift it off the flame, count five, then put the powders in. Coriander and cumin powder are hardier, and they genuinely need half a minute in fat or they taste raw.
Whole spices or ground — which when?
Whole spices go into hot fat at the start, or into something that will simmer a long time; ground spices go in later and give body, colour and immediate flavour. The difference is how fast they release. A whole seed holds its oils inside and lets them out slowly into the fat, perfuming everything and never tasting raw, which is why mustard, cumin, methi, cinnamon and clove begin a dish. A powder gives all its flavour at once, thickens the gravy a little and carries colour, which is why coriander, cumin, turmeric and chilli powder do the work in the middle. Whole spices left in a long-simmered dish keep giving for the whole hour; the price is biting into a clove, so fish out the big pieces or warn people. In most dishes you do not choose, you use both. The mistake is doing it backwards — powder into the first spit of hot oil and whole seeds at the end, where they stay hard and give nothing.
Do spices need roasting, and how do I do it right?
Dry roasting changes the taste, and it is the cheapest improvement you can make to a homemade masala. Heat a heavy tava or kadai on a low flame with no oil, roast one kind of spice at a time, and keep them moving. Cumin takes two to three minutes, coriander seeds three to five, sesame and peanut about the same. Wait for two signs: the colour deepens by one shade, and the smell turns from raw and grassy to toasted and warm. The moment you can smell it across the kitchen, tip it out onto a cold plate, because whatever stays on the tava keeps cooking. Cool it completely before grinding, or the warmth makes the powder cake and go pasty. Heat brings the aromatic oils to the surface, which is also why a freshly roasted ground masala fades quickly — make small amounts and use them within a month or two. A high flame burns the outside and leaves the inside raw.
How much hing, and what does it actually do?
A pinch is the normal amount — about an eighth to a quarter teaspoon for a dish serving four. It must go into hot oil, after the mustard and cumin, and it needs no more than two or three seconds before the next thing follows. Raw hing smells sulphurous and unpleasant; hot fat changes those compounds and what you get instead is a savoury, onion-and-garlic kind of depth, which is exactly why it sits at the centre of Gujarati cooking, where many households cook without onion and garlic. It does the same job in dal, kadhi, undhiyu, pickles and almost every vaghar. Judge the quantity by what you have: shop granules or powder cut with flour are much weaker than pure resin, and a lump of pure hing needs only a scrape. Too much tastes bitter and medicinal and takes over the dish, and hing added to cold oil, or after the water, stays raw and smelly.
Why does garam masala go in at the end?
Because its smell sits in volatile oils that boil away. Garam masala is a blend of already-roasted aromatics — cardamom, cinnamon, clove, pepper, bay, mace — and the compounds you want are gone within a few minutes of hard boiling. So add it in the last two or three minutes of cooking, or stir it in with the flame off and keep the pan covered for a minute. Half to one teaspoon is plenty for a dish serving four, and it should perfume the dish rather than be the thing you taste. This is the opposite of coriander, cumin and turmeric powder, which need time in fat and water to lose their raw edge, and that is where the confusion starts. The mistake is adding garam masala with the other powders at the beginning: an hour later the dish carries the heaviness of pepper and clove with no fragrance at all, so people add more and it only turns harsher.
How do I store spices so they keep their smell?
Airtight, dark, dry and away from the stove. The smell of a spice is volatile oil, and air, light, heat and damp drive it off fast, which makes an open steel dabba on a shelf above a lit burner the worst place in the kitchen for it. Whole spices hold their aroma for a year or more; ground spices, honestly, are past their best in three to six months, even though they stay safe much longer. So buy whole where you can, buy ground in small quantities, keep the working masala dabba small and refill it from a larger sealed jar. Never hold the dabba over a steaming pot and never dip a wet spoon in — moisture cakes the powder, and caked chilli or coriander powder loses its smell quickly. Chilli powder keeps its red colour longer in a sealed jar in the fridge. A brief warm in a dry tava wakes a dull powder slightly, but it will not bring it back.