Cooking Tips

Cooking Tips
1. Always soak rice and dal in water for atleast 15 to 30 min before cooking. It saves cooking time and good for health as well.
2. Always cook in slow flame or in medium flame. Only when it is demanded cook in high flame and stand nearby until you finish it to avoid overcooking or burn food.
3. Dont blindly follow any recipe from cook book or blogs or heard from someone. Because the spice level, duration of cooking, water level differs slightly based on quality of ingredients, Vessel type, water quality, Flame heat level, measurement cups & spoons and so on. Adjust as per your cooking style and taste preference.
4. Boil water and cool it down then use for preparing coconut milk.
5. Use less of high fat items like ghee, cashew, coconut in your recipes. Just because its available dont add to all day to day recipe and make them taste rich but heavy to digest. Only when its required add them.
6. When you are adding grated coconut to any poriyal, kootu, sundal etc add at end after you switch off the stove. But if you are going to keep the food for dinner as well or for long hours then mix coconut well and cook for couple of minute to avoid food getting spoiled soon.
7. When you are making any dough always add all dry items and mix well. Then add liquid items and knead to form dough.
8. For any keerai recipe add salt after it shrinks and quantity gets reduced. Beginners will know the importance!
9. Make recipe with what you have in hand. We can always replace one with other. Like for spice you have green chilly, red chilly, chilly powder and pepper. Also, the same way with veg, non veg, egg and keerai. Its up to us to prefer which one we like to eat.
10. If you want to increase spice level in any poriyal or chutney add some Idly milaghai podi and mix well. Taste also increases!
11. If for any non veg gravy or fry items you wish to increase spice level after completing it, no problem add pepper powder. It also increases the taste!
12. Add soda or food color only when the recipe demands. Only when you cant prepare a recipe with out soda add them. Its not good for health so skip in day to day recipes.
13. If you are serving kids then add grated carrot or finely chopped veggies to recipes like Idly, dosa, paniyaram, upma, noodles etc.You can even boil and grind them then add in tiffen item preparations like puri or chappathi.
14. Slit chilly and add to recipe. So that you can remove them once cooking is finished. My hubby dont like to see chilly in his plate and I dont want my kid to eat it by chance.
15. When grinding for Idly batter , grind urud dal first then rice so that it will be easy to clean the grinder. Grind both urud and rice to smooth texture if you want to use same batter for idly, dosa, paniyaram and uthappam. If you are preparing for Idly alone then grind urud dal to smooth texture and rice to slightly coarse texture.