How to Cook Indian Food

Instructions Step 1: You Will Need: 2 c. Indian atta flour or mixture of flour 1 tsp. salt 2 tsp. vegetable oil, plus more for frying 3/4 to 1 c. warm water, or as needed Optional: 1 1/3 c. all-purpose (plain) flour and 2/3 cup whole-wheat Step 2: Make the dough In a medium howl …

Transcript Hi, I’m Maya Kaimal, and I’m going to show you how to make a South Indian vegetable curry called Green Bean’s Thoran. This is actually my favorite curry of all, I love it, I grew up eating my grandmother’s version, and it’s actually pretty easy to make. So we start by actually blending some …

Transcript Okay, now we’re going to put in our two dried red chilies, and let those cook in that oil for a few seconds. And now we’re going to put in those nice fresh curry leaves, and they’re going to splatter, so I need to put the lid on. Now this is a herb that’s …

Transcript Okay, we have out eight balls. And I’m going to use my Indian rolling pin, that I love, to roll these out, a little bit of flour. And I like this Indian style rolling pin a lot because it gives me a better feel for the thickness of the dough. So, I’m smashing out …

Transcript Now over to our chicken. I have some thighs and breasts. The important thing to do here is that you need to score your meat so that the marinade can get deep inside. It also helps it cook a little faster too. So, just a couple slits on each piece, getting in nice and …

Transcript Hi, I’m going to show you how to make paneer. Paneer is an Indian cheese that’s very similar to ricotta. You can buy it pre-made in the store, but it’s so easy to make. I’m going to show you how to do it very simply today. First, you want to start out with about …

Transcript I’m going to talk about the differences between north and south Indian food. North Indian food is what you would have had in your typical Indian restaurant in North America. It tends to have, they have a lot of roasted meats that are cooked in the Tandor. Tandori chicken would be an example. They …

Transcript [Background music] We’re talking about asafoetida. Asafoetida is a spice that’s used in Indian cooking. It actually comes from the middle east but it’s used primarily in India. Its the powdered resin of a fennel like plant and they powder it and mix it with a little bit of rice flower and turmeric. So …

Transcript Cardamom is one of the most valuable spices in the world. Vanilla and Saffron being the other two most expensive spices. It’s grown in southern India. Grows in little pods that are dried. These are green Cardamom pods which have a nice, almost sort of camphor, sweet smell to them. There’s green Cardamom. There’s …

Transcript Fenugreek is a spice used in Indian cooking, although it actually comes from the Mediterranean. And the name fenugreek translates to mean “Greek hay.” Indians use it, and they use it in many different forms. The fresh leaves are actually cooked as a green, much like spinach. In north India, they’ll also use the …

Transcript We’re going to talk about Garm Masala. The name Garm means hot. Masala means spices. So it’s a mixture of hot or warm spices. It’s typically used in north Indian food, and it’s arguably the most important spice blend that’s used in Indian cooking. Indians don’t actually use curry powder. That’s something that was …

Transcript I’m going to tell you about turmeric. Turmeric is a spice used in much of Indian cooking. It has a that bright yellow hue that’s often associated with curry powder, but it’s just one ingredient that appears in many curry powders. When it grows fresh it’s a rhizome, it’s an underground stem. And it …

Transcript We’re going to talk about chutneys. Chutneys are a distinctly Indian condiment, there kind of like a Indian salsa. They’re usually a little bit spicy, and they’re eaten in small dollops either on a plate with your curry’s and rice, or as a condiment to spicy fried snacks like pakoras, or poppadom. In India …

Transcript I’tm going to tell you about papadam or pappads. These are the lentil wafers that are made out of Urad Dal, which is a small white bean that is ground into a paste and rolled out into discs and then these are dried in the sun. They are called papadam in the south of …

Instructions Step 1: You will need: 1 c. thoor dal, masoor dal, or yellow split peas 2 tbsp. vegetable oil 1/2 tsp. mustard seeds 1 dried red chili 1/4 c. finely chopped onion 1 tsp. minced garlic Spice Blend 1/2 tsp. cumin 1/4 tsp. turmeric 1/8 tsp. cayenne 1 tsp. salt 1 tsp. fresh lemon …

Transcript Okay, we’re going to season our dal now. We’ve got some oil heating up in a pan. And we’re going to add our ingredients to our hot oil, starting with our mustard seeds. Now, these will actually pop so you want to have a lid handy. They’re going to pop slightly as the moisture …

Transcript Hi, I’m going to teach you how to make ghee. Ghee is an Indian form of clarified butter. It’s butter fat, but it has all the water evaporated out of it. It’s not hard to make, but it does take a certain attention to detail. You want to start out with unsalted butter, which …

Transcript Hi I’m Maya Kaimal and I’m going to show you how to make channa masala. Channa masala is a nice basic chick pea curry with tomatoes. It’s also known as chole. Today we’re going to make my father’s recipe with chick peas, and we’re going to start with a taiga, which is a seasoning …

Transcript Our tomatoes are nice and soft, and it’s time to add our chickpeas. I’m using canned. If you like to soak your beans and cook them from scratch that’s great, but I find that canned is also good and really convenient. I’m going to add about a half cup of water and put this …

Transcript Hi, I’m Maya Kaimal I’m going to show you how to make chicken curry. There’s millions of different ways to make chicken curry, but we’re going to make a very basic version here, sort of a north-Indian style. And we’re going to make it using chicken thighs. I’ve got some bone-in chicken thighs that …

Transcript Okay. Our tomatoes have cooked down nicely, so we have a nice, soft, wet masala here. We’re going to add to this some sour cream. You can use yogurt also. You can also use coconut milk. If this were a South Indian style curry, it would have coconut milk, but it’s a North Indian …

Transcript Hi, I’m Maya Kaimal, and I’m going to teach you how to make chicken tikka masala. Chicken tikka masala has the hallmarks of a north Indian style curry. It has a lot of dairy. It has garam masala and dried fenugreek at the end. But, it’s actually a dish that was created in Britain …

Transcript We’ve got our cream and we’ve got our yogurt in. And now, we’re going to add some chicken. So, we have our chicken Tikka here, which I’ve already cooked. And I’m gonna add, not gonna add all of it. I just like to have mine saucy. Stir it up nicely. You could also use …

Transcript Hi, today I’m going to teach you how to make a mango lassi. Lassis are a refreshing Indian drink made with yogurt. They’re a mixture of yogurt and fruit or yogurt and salt. Today we’re going to make a sweet one, a sweet mango one. We’re going to add two cups of plain yogurt …

Transcript Hi. I’m Maya Kaimal, Indian cookbook author and founder of Maya Kaimal Fine Indian Foods, which is my line of Indian sauces. You can check me out on the web at mayakaimal.com. I grew up in Boston eating my South Indian father’s amazing cooking and my American mother’s excellent cooking. But it was my …

Transcript Let’s talk about tamarind. Tamarind is the fruit of the tamarind tree. It grows in a pod, like this. Looks kind of like a runner bean. It’s got a hard shell on it. So when it’s sold it’s sold as a block of the pulp from the inside. It’s also sold as a concentrate …

Transcript Okay. Our paneer has had a chance to set up, so it’s a nice firm disk as you can see here. You unwrap it, unwrap the cheesecloth. And here is our paneer. Now, it’s ready to be cut. And you can see the texture there. It’s pretty firm. And depending on how much weight, …

Transcript It’s called tandoori chicken because it cooks in a tandoor oven, which is a large clay oven that gets very, very hot, to about 700 degrees. So it cooks meat really quickly and keeps it very succulent. When meat is cooked in a tandoor it’s always marinated, in usually a yogurt based marinade. So …