Tempering - Basics

Almost every Indian recipe that I've posted, I start the cooking process with tempering. I've been asked by a couple of people what the purpose of tempering is.

Not until I actually started cooking did I stop for a second and think about why we actually add tempering to all (or almost all) Indian dishes. As a kid growing up, all I knew while I watched my mom cook was that it was an integral part of the daily cooking. You had to add "tadka" or "bhagaar" or "popu" (which is what we refer to as tempering in English) to "make it taste better". One of my food-related memories as a kid was tasting a yummy tamarind rice dish that my mom made and biting into the dried red chilli that she added with the tempering and frantically drink tons of water and eat some sugar, all to calm down the fire in my mouth! It was then I realized that, dried red chillies are to be added to enhance the flavor of the dish and add that little heat to the dish and are not meant to be actually eaten.

So what is the purpose of tempering? Quite obvious, actually - Frying all the potent spices in hot oil releases the flavours of the spices and the aroma, and cooking the dish in this flavorful oil adds the subtle taste of the spices to the dish, without overpowering the actual dish itself. There are two ways to temper your dish. Start the cooking process by adding spices to the hot oil and then cooking the dish in this or cook the dish and add the spices to oil separately and add to the cooked dish. I've seen that in some dishes adding it later enhances the dish a little bit more. Ingredients used in tempering vary with different cooking styles (north Indian vs south Indian). You must have noticed that I invariably use mustard seeds, cumin seeds, black gram dhal, (lentils) dried red chillis, turmeric and asafoetida (sometimes). A lot of these spices are known for improving digestive health and healing powers. Turmeric, for example, has anti-oxidants for  building immunity and also heals wounds etc. Cumin is known to improve digestion.

clockwise: dried red chilli, black gram dhal, split pea dhal, cumin seeds, mustard seeds

Another way to introduce spices to your dish is to roast them (dry or in oil) and blend them to a powder and add while you cook. Or blend to a paste and add to your dish. These are commonly referred to as Masalas (The very popular, Garam Masala for example). More about masalas in a future post.

There are so may many more spices that make Indian cooking so delicious and bursting with flavor, but these basic ones I mentioned are a good place to start. I'll introduce a few more spices in my future posts (cardamom and cloves, anybody??) :)