“The Masala Labs” by Krish Ashok is quite a unique book.
It is perhaps the only resource that explores Indian cooking with a scientific lens and gives us practical hacks and heuristics to become a better cook.
While I strongly recommend that anyone interested in Indian cooking read the entire book, here’s a compilation of 51 unconventional tips & hacks from it to level up your cooking game instantly.
Vegetables and Legumes
- Chickpeas soaked in warm water absorb it faster, this is useful if you forgot to soak them overnight.
- Green leafy vegetables get bitter under extra heat, so they must be cooked with care.
- The best way to cook leaves is to Blanche them in boiling water for 30 seconds and remove them from heat.
- Most vegetables cook best at high temperatures for a short time.
- Use salted water while boiling vegetables. It will accelerate their cooking time.
Baking Soda
- Adding a pinch of baking soda to the pressure cooker cooks chickpeas to perfect softness. Also, add a Teabag to absorb all the unused soda.
- Adding baking soda to boiling chopped potato will make a perfect golden roasted potato.
- While boiling eggs, add a pinch of baking soda to the water, this will keep the egg from sticking to the shell.
Flavour Enhancement
- Cook onions on a slow flame till they are brown, not just translucent. The difference in flavour is immense.
- Tomato ketchup is a great flavour enhancer. It can be used instead of tomato paste/puree in any recipe. Ketchup will improve any red-coloured gravy.
- Sugar(preferably brown) is another flavour enhancer. A teaspoon of it will elevate the taste of any dish.
- To extract the amazing flavors of tomatoes, cook them slower and longer.
- A pinch of salt in your kheer can make it taste more intense.
- Sugar balances saltiness. Adding lots of sugar allows you to add lots of salt to your dish. Restaurants use this to the extreme.
- Mixing garlic and onion powder gives that addictive taste to snacks.
- Sourness mutes bitterness, squeezing lemon into spinach dishes will mute any bitterness from the leaves.
- In chillies, it’s not the seeds but the placenta which connects the seeds to the flesh that has the most heat.
- Microwaves work by heating water inside foods and hence don’t work well for foods lacking enough moisture.
- Flavour molecules in spices dissolve only in fats, not water. This is why most of our dishes start with whole spices added to hot oil.
- Alcohol mutes heat and acids amplify it. Drinking coca-cola after having spicy food amplifies the hotness, not reduce it.
- Vinegar can be used as a replacement for tamarind or lime juice.
- To impart tandoor-style smoky flavours, heat up charcoal for 5 minutes, place it in a small metal cup, drop a tsp of ghee into it and place the cup in your dish, then seal the lid for 2-3 minutes.
- Brown as many ingredients as possible before adding them to any gravy.
Heat & Spices
- If you want flavour of the chillies, use them whole. If you want only heat, use the powder.
- For spices, dry roasting will extract 3x the flavours compared to unroasted spice.
- Dry herbs are best added late in the cooking process.
- Whole spices should be added at the start and spice powders should be added right at the end of cooking.
- Always buy whole spices, powdered spices lose their flavour very quickly.
Meats
- To cook chicken breast without it being rubbery and dry, use sous vide cooking.
- For meats, brining works better than marination to inject flavours. The marinade doesn’t penetrate deeper the longer you marinate.
- Long marination is not required. 30 minutes to 2 hours is sufficient.
- Before marinating, beat the meat with a tenderizing hammer. For best results, brine your meat(small pieces) for a few hours and then marinate in spices for about an hour.
Utensils
- Aluminium and cast iron will react with acids like tomatoes or tamarind and produce off-putting flavours.
- Low-cost non-stick cookware can be problematic. The Teflon coating can disintegrate at high heat and get into your food with repeated use.
Garlic
- Garlic must be added after the onions have cooked in any dish, else they will likely burn.
- Garlic added at the end will give a stronger flavour than when it’s cooked from the beginning of a dish.
- In terms of flavour strength whole cloves<roughly chopped<minced garlic.
- Your entire body smells garlicky for 24 hours when you eat a ton of garlic.
- To deal with the garlic smell, eat parsley, apples or pears, peppermint, basil or mushrooms.
Pressure Cooking
- Measure pressure cooking in terms of time elapsed after it released some steam instead of in no.of whistles.
- Avoid pressure cooking for meats and seafood. Again, the best way is to go low and slow.
- Cleaning the lid after cooking dal in a pressure cooker is a pain. A teaspoon of oil added to water in the pressure cooker will make cleaning it easier.
- Onions can be caramelized using a pressure cooker. Add butter, salt and onions to a pressure cooker and cook for 20 minutes at peak pressure.
Rice & Roti
- While cooking rice, use the “one knuckle above rice” water level instead of ratios like 1:2 or 1:1.5
- To get perfectly cooked rice, use an open vessel.
- For a soft chapatti, use 100g of water for 100g of atta.
Oils & Frying
- Use expensive oils only for finishing and not for cooking.
- Always heat the oil before adding onions.
- For best frying results, fry in a narrow vessel, in smaller batches and add a pinch of baking soda to the batter.
Biryani
- A balanced biryani uses equal amounts of rice and meat. So use 250g of meat for 250g of rice.
- While cooking dum biryani, use bay leaves as a layer at the bottom of the vessel. Layer meat on top of this and then rice and all other herbs, milk etc.
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