Cooking is a scary thing for bachelors. That is the number 2 reason why most Indian guys rush to get married. The number 1 reason is security and purpose in life, but that’s a long topic and I’ll get back to that later.
I can’t help with the first reason, but I think I can give you some tips on the second one (aka Cooking). First off this post is mainly about some North Indian cooking and a generalisation of various things needed for a kitchen. Please note you wont make food as good as your moms. That is years of practice but what you will learn is how to appreciate her food far more next time you are home because while cooking is not hard, tasty cooking is an art. My mom’s food is the best anyway, and that’s the level one should aim for but not necessarily achieve in this lifetime.
Basic Utensils.
I would recommend certain key things you must have with you.
- A knife (good sharp one to cut don’t be stingy in buying it)
- A cutting board
- A vessel stirrer (thats a tool to stir the veggies)
- A nice stainless steel open end vessel (called Kadhai in the north)
- A cooker (if you boil veggies/make rice)
- Gas to cook on and a stove (not really utensils…but very necessary)
Once you get this gig together, it’s on get the
Basic Spices
No Indian dish is ever complete without spices and it is a must to have certain key ingredients for taste. Indian cooking is a bit spicy so if you aren’t from India but want to try it out be warned this is like eating chilly flavoured stuff. I remember a joke I had heard about a foreigner who ate Indian cooking and then went to the bathroom. He commented on getting out, ” I know why Indians don’t use toilet paper now with the food it would catch fire”.
Tasty Indian cooking needs the following spices. I buy all of the powders since this is the 21st century and you don’t go around grinding the herbs (although that would taste much fresher). You can get all of these from your local indian store ( I did it in Germany, so I’m pretty sure you can get it in the States as well).
- Dhania Powder (Coriander leaves)
- Haldi (Turmeric, mainly used for color and seasoning)
- Garam Masala Powder (thats literally hot spicy powder)
- Red Chilly powder (for that extra zang)
- Jeera Powder (Cumin seeds powder)
- Salt
- Sugar
- Pepper
I have a nice box that has small containers so I just put everything in it and have a small spoon to pick and choose and put them together. It’s called an Indian Masala Dabba (box). Once you have this you can now get the
Basic Vegetables
Obviously, this is what you want to cook. Each vegetable and the dish you want to cook is impossible to cover in this blog post, so I am going to put the most important vegetables that form a part of almost every North Indian dish that you should keep with you.
- Onions (most important for everything)
- Tomatoes
- Green Chillies
- Potatoes
- Garlic
Alternatively you could also get the paste for these things, MTR (in India) have a good stock of this and plus you can get tomato, ginger and garlic paste pretty much anywhere. They do a decent job.
Now that’s a basic of what you generally need for cooking, in the next series of posts, I’ll explore each dish I have made and what I found wrong, what could be better and hopefully accompanied by a picture. But here are some general tips on cooking.
Oil
It is good to have non cholestrol or sunflower oil to cook the dish in. Even if you decide to steam your veggies and eat, the oil adds a bit of taste and avoids the food from being too sticky. You could use olive oil but I found that to have a weird taste that requires you to get used to.
Cooking onions
Any good cook will tell you that onions should not be over fried. So this means that you should have all the vegetables cut and ready and while you roast the onions, it should only be to the level where they become golden brown. This is what they look like (image courtesy: cookingartsy)
Frying Tomatoes
Tomatoes fry really fast, so it’s important that they aren’t too long in the frying pan. Generally it’s best to have them at the last when the dish is done, but some people to get that taste fry it in the start just after the onions are done and then immediately add the rest of the vegetables.
Adding Water
Water is an important ingredient when you want the dish to be gravy-like. What you basically do is add in some cups of water at the very last and let the whole dish boil for a while, this makes the veggies really soft to eat. You don’t add water if you want to have the dish as a dry dish. Like duh.
Fire tempature (Heat Control)
It’s really important to keep the fire levels in control (if you are abroad then you don’t need this you just need to adjust the temparature of the heating pan to get your desired levels). In the start to test if the oil is just heated and ready for the onion cooking you should add in some cumin seeds till they start to roast and pop out that way you know when the dish is heated. Alternatively, you could put in some water and see if it starts to evaporate so you know the vessel has reached the threshold temparature.
Vegetables that have a soft base like carrots, cauliflower, potatoes etc should be cooked at the sim level. Basically on a scale of 10, it should be around 4. Medium low heat while frying with the onions, you can then heat it up a bit more to 6 or so when you add in the water. If you are just frying it then the onions should be cooked at around 3-4 then the vegetables around 4-5 for ideal frying.
You are probably thinking dude this is like standard stuff wtf, but I had no idea how to make anything. I learnt it on my own with 2 gurus in Germany and my mom on long distance call. It was a valuable education. If you can get into cooking classes to learn the heavy stuff like baking and desserts and etc but if you want to just get to make food when you are alone and not spend Rs 200 on one meal, then I hope I have helped you to get started with the vessles. The next post on cooking will show you some basic ways to mix and match and what spices add what taste etc. Remember the dangers of cooking really well is that you’ll lick the plate clean. Aslo watch Ratatouille, it never fails to inspire you.
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