Cooking Tips II

Tips
1. Never skip ingredients like jeera, sombu, garlic, ginger and hing. These items are added to nullify gastric troubles.
2. Prefer gingerly oil for spicy recipes and fish recipes.
3. Always prefer hot water to knead chapathi dough.
4. While tempering ensure oil is hot enough so that when you add tempering items it should splutter well. You will hear sound as well as you can smell the nice aroma of the item you temper. Let it be mustard, jeera or sombu , curry leaves .. what ever .. you can hear it and smell it as well. Also make sure you dont burn ingredients while tempering!
5. After kneading dough for chappathi, puri, idiyappam etc. always cover it with wet cloth or just coat with oil to avoid dough outer portion getting dry.
6. Always soak basmathi rice in water before you cook. The ratio of rice is to water depends on how long you soak in water. I always use 1:1.5 if the soak time is 15 min. If more then its always 1:1.
7. While you prepare curd at home do add some tblsp of curd to warm milk (Milk should not be cold or hot!). If we prepare with slightly warm milk then the curd we get is thick and creamy!
8. When you are mixing rice always use wooden spoon or ladle like dosa flipper. So that rice does not breaks much.
9. Place 2 or 3 cloves in sugar bottle to keep ants away from sugar.
10. Before storing dal, flour, rava etc store the packets in fridge (You can use side doors)  for 2 to 3 days. Then unpack and store in air tight containers. You get longer shelf life.
11. Remove stems of green chilly, roots of coriander leaves and stems of curry leaves. Pat dry if there is any wetness. Then store them in fridge. You get longer shelf life.
12. If you want to retain good color of veggies in poriyal then keep pan open and cook. Dont close the pan and cook.
13. For vatha kuzhambu and kara kuzhambu be generous with sesame oil to balance heat. You can also add small piece of jaggary towards end to enhance taste.
14. To pressure cook dal the ratio of dal to water is 1:2. Pressure cook for 3 whistle.
15. For variety rice , after cooking rice spread it over large plate or bowl. Add 1 tblsp of sesame oil. Dont mix while rice is hot. Adding oil helps to keep grains separate.