There are a number of ready made masalas available in the market today, they make your food tasty and also reduce the time of preparation. Just think of the plight of your mothers and grandmothers who would have had to grind the masalas every time they had to prepare a dish, and they had to prepare food three times a day. with families being joint, there would have been more members in each family, and women had to prepare food for all these people.
And, today you have mixer grinders that eases your work, and yet resorting to ready made powders is not unusual. However you have to understand that these masalas are prepared in places that are unknown to you and it might be unhygienic too. the ingredients added, thus you would not know what goes into your packed ready made masala.
Well if you take a little care you would be able to prepare these masalas at home, you need to have some patience and a small amount of attention, and you would be able to prepare these and store it for the whole year.
I shall give the recipe of a podi everyday so as to make it easy for you to comprehend.
Sambhar Podi
any South Indian home would be incomplte without a sambhar posi, well if you are buying it from the store, you can stop now. here is the recipe of sambhar podi.
Ingredients
1. Red Chilies – 1 Kg Kayntha milagai
2. Corriander seeds -750gms Malli
3. Jeera – 150 gms Seeragam
4. Urad Dhal – 50 gms Ulunthu
5. Channa Dhal – 100 gms Kadalai Paruppu
6. Rice – 50 gms Arisi
7. Black Pepper – 50 gms Milagu
8. Fenugreek seeds – 2 tablespoon Venthayam
9. Asofoetida (Hing) – 2 teaspoon perungayam
10. Termeric – 2 pieces Virali manjal
11. Curry Leaves – handful Kariveppilai
Sun dry the chillies and coriander seeds for a day and remove the stalks of the chillies. clean the coriander seeds and keep them aside. dry roast the other ingredients separately in a kadai, take care to roast one by one other wise some ingredient would get roasted too much while the others still remain raw. this would not give a good result.
after roasting, mix all the ingredients and let them cool off for some time. powder the ingredients and make sure to grind them to a fine powder. if the powder is not fine you might not get the right consistency in your sambhar. you can add salt to this too, however the podi is fine without salt, you can add salt when you are preparing the sambhar.
To Reduce Thickness
Sambar prepared using this podi would be of the consistency you usually get in saravan bhavan, however if you do not want such thick consistency you can avoid using urad dhal, channa dhal and rice. however when you do not use these ingredients you have to increase the amount of coriander seeds to half the amount of chilly.
