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Easy Indian Cooking, Tips

Tips and tricks to help you with Indian cooking

October 14, 2016

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Cooking Tips Indian cuisine – The next post in the series that is all about making cooking easier- right from buying and storing groceries / produce to kitchen hacks, time saving shortcuts and tips to make your life easier in the kitchen. This post rounds up some of the useful tricks to have up your sleeve for Indian cooking!

cooking tips Indian cuisine
  1. Coconut is an essential garnish and a part of many fresh masalas in Tamil and Malayalam cooking. Grate/scrape the entire coconut, freeze the grated coconut in an ice cube tray. Once frozen save these grated coconut cubes in a sealable bag in a freezer and use as required. One cube is the perfect quantity to garnish a poriyal dish.
  2. For softer chapatis, add a teaspoon oil to the flour and knead the dough with warm water. Rest the dough in a covered bowl for at least 15 minutes. [Watch: How to make the perfect phulka]
  3. To cook rice for pulao or biryani, add a few drops of lemon juice, salt and oil to the rice while cooking to get each grain separate and fluffy.
  4. While cooking dals or beans for dal fry or rajma masala or chole, do not add salt to the water while pressure cooking. This will ensure that the dal/ beans cooks until it is nearly falling apart.
  5. Dal cooks faster if you add a few drops of oil and a pinch of turmeric powder to the water. Add some extra water to dal so the dal-water can be used to prepare a light rasam or used as a stock for soup.
  6. The leftover whey after making paneer can be used to cook rice, dal or in soups. It can also be used to knead dough for rotis.
  7. For the perfect tempering, always add spices to hot oil and transfer over dish as soon as the mustard / cumin seeds have spluttered. Adding spices to cold oil will not carry the spice flavours into the dish.
  8. Always soak beans overnight and any kind of lentils for at least 30 minutes before cooking, for quicker cooking and to negate the effect of phytates.
  9. Before squeezing a lemon, microwave it whole for 10 seconds to get maximum juice out of it. This trick works for oranges too. No microwave? Roll the lemon firmly on the chopping board or kitchen counter top before squeezing.To peel ginger, use the edge of a teaspoon to scrape out the skin.
  10. To get finely grated ginger every single time, freeze the peeled ginger and grate it whenever required. Storing it in freezer makes sure it stays fresh for very long and you get very finely grated ginger too.
  11. If you need just one boiled potato for a chaat, sandwich or poha, cut it in half. Place in a microwave safe box or bowl with a lid with 2 tablespoons of water, cut side facing up. Microwave on high for 4-5 minutes (depending on size). Cool for 2 minutes, peel and use.
  12. To prevent millets from clumping up after cooking, fluff them up and remove them to a casserole. Keeping it in the pressure cooker or the vessel in which it is cooked makes it clump up.
  13. To ensure pickles last longer, always use a clean, dry spoon, or better still, heat the spoon over a flame before using it to dip into the bottle.
  14. Vegetables like potato, sweet potato, plantain, eggplant etc. tend to discolour once cut, so immerse them in a bowl of water, until you are ready to cook with them.
  15. While preparing green chutney (mint and coriander), add a pinch of turmeric powder and lemon juice to retain the bright green colour.
  16. In spinach based curries like palak paneer, to retain the bright green colour, blanche spinach leaves in boiling water in refresh in cold water before pureeing.
  17. If a dal or curry has become over salted, add half a peeled raw potato and simmer for a few minutes. The potato will absorb the excess salt. A tightly pressed ball of rice can also be used for the same.
  18. To peel almonds, soak them in boiling hot water for 30 minutes. The skins will come off easily.

[This list will be updated regularly, so do bookmark it for easy reference.]

If you liked this post on Cooking tips Indian cuisine, also check out: Food buying and storage tips

Like what you see here? Stay connected with me on Instagram, Facebook, BlogLovin’ and Pinterest.

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cooking tips Indian cooking
by Nandita Iyer 
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Comments

  1. Dhan Sundaram says: October 20, 2016 at 9:36 am

    Very useful tips

    Reply
  2. nandita says: October 20, 2016 at 3:08 pm

    @dhan thank you!

    Reply
  3. Mrs.Rajeev says: July 17, 2017 at 9:40 pm

    Informative

    Reply

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  • It’s my friend’s birthday today so I called her over for lunch and I promised her a light lunch because of her dining out plans for dinner. My fridge was nearly empty with a little bit of this and that. I had fresh greens from the garden, fresh paneer, one strawberry and a bit of purple cabbage. The butternut squash was made into a Thai coconut soup. Salads were a kale purple cabbage and double beans salad (kale and beans from garden) and a mixed greens salad with paneer.
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It’s in two parts to overcome the one minute video length limitation - but the whole video is on my IGTV too. This is Raag Puriya Dhanashree, a much loved evening raaga sung between 3-6pm, more suited to dusk if you ask me :) #saffrontrail
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I edited this to get a black and white version and quite liked the effect🤗
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Which one do you like better?
  • Just done licking this bowl clean 😋😋😋
Breakfast: Full fat yogurt + homemade strawberry jam (linking in stories)+ crunchy toasty seed nut mix to top.
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That's a hearty dose of protein, calcium, B12, healthy fats in a bowl. If you are vegan, then use coconut yogurt or any other plant based yogurt.
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You'll find me making the seed mix last evening in my stories.
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For more such no sweat healthy eating ideas, follow @saffrontrail
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💡💡💡Tip: Create a HEALTHY FOOD IDEAS folder in your Instagram and save this pic to your folder. I have one such folder too where I save all the good food ideas to try out when I'm wondering what to cook / eat.
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Shopping:
Coconut shell bowl bought from @essentialtraditionsbykayal
Copper spoon from @shein_in
Cast iron pan @lodgecastiron bought from Amazon.in
  • If anything, gardening teaches you patience. Been waiting over 6 years for this lemon bush to bear fruit. Last year we had 1 or 2 lemons every 3-4 months. Whether it was just time that played its magic or the care we have given the plant, it is fruiting rather well this year. Not to the level of several hundred lemons that people talk about their lemon plants, but a couple of dozens is a good start and I'm very happy about it.
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I wrote a post to compile all the research and learnings on things to do to make your lemon plant fruit well, sometime last year. I'll link it up in my stories if you want to have a read :)
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These lemons were gathered / plucked over last two days. Swipe to see a close up ..
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Meanwhile, basking in citrus aromas and gratitude 🤗🤗🤗
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Anyone know what variety these are? Thick skin, fairly juicy, has seeds but not a huge number, spherical in shape, fragrant skin too. @geekgardener @yougrowgirl
@a_madteaparty @sangeetaamkhanna
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  • Remember that kindergarten rhyme/game?
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Totally loving the Kinnow oranges in season these days. Made an orange yogurt poppyseed cake today using the @epicurious grapefruit poppyseed cake recipe and it turned out so moist and flavoursome. The lemons are from my kitchen garden. Citrus season is indeed a happy season 😍
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Don't miss my kitchen garden tour video - Feb updates. It's 10 minutes long, covers my entire garden and you'll find it on IGTV.
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What's your favorite way to use Kinnow Oranges?

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