Spices in Indian Food

Choose Your Spice-Mix With Care

Used in the right manner, spices cloak an averagely-cooked meal with flavours that can readily make you believe that you have excelled your wildest expectations, i.e. in terms of being worthy in the kitchen space. While choosing a spice paste, ensure that you choose one that has maximum scope for repeated use, i.e. the same spice blend can be used for a variety of dishes, since most South-Indian dishes use a similar, spice base in which the raw vegetable (or meat) is sautéed. Most South-Indian dishes can be easily prepared at home with spice pastes that tend to lock-in the aroma of the spices and instantly deliver the desired effect, when poured into the pan.

Coconut powder and curry leaves form an essential part of almost every South-Indian meal but you should decipher on the degree of tanginess (rendered by curry leaves) or cream-like thickness of gravy (delivered by coconut powder) you need to choose the appropriate spice-mix. Again, you should enquire about the manner in which the spice-mix has been procured. If the packaged instructions read, "dry-roasted spices", be prepared to witness darker shades of yellow and red in your food every time you use the retailed spice-mix, i.e. the curried aspect is visually intensified.