Spice Up Your Dishes with Indian Spices

You’ve probably always wanted to experiment with Indian cuisine because you’d love to relive the exotic flavours you experienced in an Indian restaurant or at an Indian friend’s home once. But you don’t know where to start, with the incredible range of spices to learn and choose from.

Don’t worry. You’re not alone. Many home cooks have experienced the same intimidation with a cuisine whose recipes demand a perfect blend of strong spices, each with a distinct taste and smell. How exactly do you make these strong-smelling spices blend in perfect harmony in one dish?

We reveal to you a few simple cooking tips you can get started with:

Marinade:

Marination is always a sure way to make protein tastier. In Indian cooking, marination usually involves using yogurt or some other acidic ingredient, as well as spices. Butter chicken, tikka and other recipes often call for marination as the first step. Spices that are commonly used for marination are turmeric, garam masala, cardamom, coriander and cumin.

Tadka (Frying Spices in Oil):

This is a very quick step in Indian cooking that serves to enhance virtually any dish. The process involves frying spices in hot oil or ghee (clarified butter) quickly, to infuse the oil with the flavours of the spices. It takes only about 10-30 seconds for the infusion to happen, so watch closely over your stove. Burnt spices never taste good. If your tadka is executed with care, you’ll have that wonderful infusion of spices that you can pour over your dish to give it extra flavour and depth.

Onions and Other Vegetables:

After the oil is infused with spices, natural flavour enhancers like onions, ginger, garlic, leeks, chilies, ground spices and black pepper can be added. As a general rule in Indian cooking, spices in their whole or seed form go into the pan first to let their flavours come out, while ground spices come later on, since the ground versions don’t need as much cooking time.

Spicing a Sauce:

For sauce-based recipes, after adding your sauce base such as coconut milk, milk, cream, tomato sauce, tomatoes, or tomato paste, you can add more spices like turmeric, paprika, and Indian red chili powder to balance your flavours. Sauce-based recipes are great for beginning Indian cooks, since the liquid used prevents accidental burning of spices which makes a dish taste bitter.

There may be a wide array of Indian spices to choose from, which may seem confusing at first as to which ones you can use for a dish, but the truth is, spices always complement one another to create a fine blend of flavours, as long as they are cooked with care. Cooking with care means taking care that your spices don’t burn, and being cautious about the amount of spice you use, since their flavours are very strong. As a rule of thumb when it comes to cooking with Indian spices, a little goes a long way. Too much of any spice can spoil the dish.

Don’t be afraid to try out different combinations of spices, with a little guidance from classic Indian recipes. Over time, you’ll get to know the spices, their smell, and the unique flavours they add to your dishes. It can be an exciting culinary journey of discovery when you embark on learning the rudiments of Indian cuisine.

At Curry Corner, we conveniently provide a range of authentic Indian spices for all your Indian cooking needs. As the original and best-loved Indian food shop in Melbourne with decades of service provided, we continue to happily serve our customers with quality products and fresh, home-cooked Indian dishes and delicacies. Visit our shop or browse through our online grocery store in Melbourne to find what you need for your Indian culinary journey.