Cooking Tips:
Here are few cooking tips which would benefit you all.
- Any type of cooking, we need todo with full dedication and interest then only the food we prepare will betasty and delicious with good fragrance.
- Do not cook any vegetables morethan it is required
- It is always good to cook Sambar,rasam or any kuzhambu varieties keeping in low or medium low flame. In oldendays people used to cook rasam in kummuti adupu
- Think and finalize on the foodthat you need to prepare for tomorrow before hand that will help us to proceedwithout waste of time
- While seasoning, do not put allthe ingredients at the same time. Do not put urdal, red chilli and mustardseeds at once. Always, first, put mustard seeds in hot oil and when the mustardseeds start to sputter, add urdal and broken chilli. This way the otheringredients do not become black as mustard seeds need some time to startsputter
- Fry broken red chilli andfenugreek seeds(Vendhayam) always to golden brown color and not black color andalso do not put more fenugreek seeds as it will make the taste bitter
- Dishes for which tamarind isused, its always good to add little jaggery which will bring down the sournessof tamarind. Some people do not like to add jaggery. Some days tamarind sourwill be more in some dishes and we will become tensed. In such situations, noneed to panic, add some jaggery and the sourness will come down and dishbecomes tasty
- Do not add Salt, Tamarind andspicy more this will spoil the taste and it will not be healthy also
- For any fried vegetable recipeslike potato fry etc, it is not necessary to add more oil. Add little oil andsprinkle water and cook the vegetables in low flame
- For Thengai(Coconut) araithuvitakootu, it always good to reduce thengai and add raw rice or rice flour whilegrinding
- In olden days, we used to chopthe vegetables and soak it water, and again we will keep the vegetables inflame and pour water again to cook the vegetables. Because of this all thevitamins and minerals in the vegetables will go off. So it is always better tosoak only chopped raw banana(Vazhakaai), Brinjal, Senai in water as these willtend to become black color
- For other vegetables, it isbetter to clean them in water and then chop them
- For many vegetables curries, weused to pour more water for cooking and then drain the water once thevegetables are cooked completely. All the vitamins and minerals will go off. Sowithout wasting the drained water, we can pour those water in kuzhambu, sambaror rasam
- Always try to keep potato andonion in house. Whenever we have sudden visitors we can easily make some dishesout of these.
- For taking coconut milk, its goodto use warm water instead of cold water as warm water will extract all the milkfrom coconut while grinding
- For usili or paruppu urundai kuzhambu,it is good to soak the dals in warm or hot water instead of cold water as warmwater will make the dals to soak quickly. Otherwise it is better that we soakthe dals overnight
- If we need to grind or smashginger, It is not needed to peel the ginger skin as the smell and richness ofginger will go off. Just wash the ginger properly to clean the sand. But if weneed to chop the ginger, it is always better to peel the skin before chopping
- Always dry fry sesame seeds(Ellu)for any recipes which include this without adding oil
- Better to fry grated coconut tillit turns golden brown color for the recipes which needs fried coconut to getgood aroma
- For preparing rasam, if we arerunning out of rasam powder, nothing to worry. We can always use sambar powderand make rasam. While seasoning, add mustard seeds, cumin seeds, hing and alittle pepper powder to make it more yummy
- For cooking any greens(Keerai),it is good to add a pinch of soda salt. This will make the keerai to look greenwithout losing its original color and also its taste
- Always chopped soak plantainstem(Vazhathandu) in butter milk to retain its color
- Same way, soak the choppedplantain flower(Vazhaipoo) in butter milk. We can use the water we used toclean the rice to soak this as it will lessen then bitter taste
- Many of us do not like the bittertaste of bitter gourd. Such people can cook the bittergourd in tamarind extractalong with salt and then drain the water and fry it in oil
- If we do not have stock ofginger, we can use sukku. We can powder the sukku and soak it in hot water andthen we can use this as a replacement for ginger
- If the cooked and smashed dal isnot enough for sambar, we can take 1 tablespoon of gram flour and ½ teaspoon ofsugar and dissolve this in little water and add this to sambar and allow thesambar to boil. This will make the sambar to a thick consistency. The other wayis to add 1 tablespoon of rice flour to the smashed dal and add this to sambarto make it thick
- We can always use corn powder asa replacement for rice flour
- While cooking cabbage, most of usdo not like smell of cabbage, so it is better to use ginger to avoid this smell
- For karaitha dosai like godhumaidosa, maida dosa, it is always better to mix the flour and keep it for an houror 2 before we prepare dosa
- We need to keep the idly flouratleast for 8 hours to get fermentation. Then only the idlis will be soft andtasty. If the idlis are not soft and flat, add 2-3 tablespoons of rice flourand then pressure cook the idli
- If Senai /elephant foot is notcooked completely, it is good to add soda salt to make it cook fully. But ifturmeric powder is already added, adding of soda salt will not be good for thecolor of the senai
