Masala powder is a favorite taste of Indians, just like most of us in China like spicy food. Masala powder is a seasoning.

There is a saying on the Internet that Indian food is all mushy.

Indians really have to grind everything into a paste, either yellow or rotten, or thick or spicy. Moreover, in India, both the sumptuous delicacies in high-end restaurants and the simple snacks of ordinary people on the street have this feature.

Indian gunk food. Photography /petrrgoskov, source/idea

The reason for this is that Indians love spices too much, and paste is the easiest way to mix spices with various dishes evenly, comprehensively and thoroughly.

It can even be said that as long as it is Indian food, it must be inseparable from spices. Without spices, it is not an orthodox Indian food. Among the spices, Garam Masala is the absolute protagonist, which can be said to be the soul of Indian cuisine.

The burrito is dipped in mud. Source/Network

Indians who are unhappy without Martha

India is a country of spices.

spices have a long and ancient history in India, and they have been applied to various aspects such as aromatherapy, essential oil and tea drinking. At present, India is the world's largest producer of spices, and 7% of the world's spices come from India. There are about 3-4 kinds of spices commonly used in Indian families, and they are matched according to their own preferences, hometown tastes, local products and personal preferences.

Every mother in India will have her own unique spice formula. When children grow up and leave home, they will keep the spice flavor of their mother's Indian food. When they get home, they will ask for a taste of their mother's home-cooked Indian food. "The smell of mom is the smell of spices."

in an Indian family, on the first day of a new wife's marriage, her mother-in-law usually asks her daughter-in-law to prepare a simple dessert called "Semolina halva" to test her daughter-in-law's cooking skills. This dessert also needs spices such as cardamom.

Traditional spices and dried fruits in local markets in India. Photography /Curioso Photography, source/adobe stock

Therefore, the combination of Indian food and spices makes Indian food culture and family culture closely linked and inseparable. Masala is one of the most commonly used spices in India.

The so-called Masala, if translated literally, refers to warm spices, including cinnamon, nutmeg, black pepper, cardamom and ginger, which is somewhat similar to the thirteen spices in China. Every chef has his own recipe. The only thing that can be determined is that the general practice is that all kinds of spices are baked, cooled and then ground into powder, which tastes quite "blunt" and has a pungent feeling of spices. When cooking food, sprinkling a little Masala can greatly enhance the aroma and taste of food.

The street food stalls in India that you see in food videos, no matter how unsanitary people's production environment and methods are, can cover the taste of other ingredients by sprinkling Masala, and turn a seemingly inedible snack into a delicious human delicacy. Of course, this is just the delicious food in the eyes of Indians, which is basically unacceptable to China people. It is precisely because Masala has this magic power to turn decay into magic, so it can be called a necessary "magic weapon artifact" in the hands of Indian snack dealers.

mashala curry shrimp. Source/Network

The spread of Masala in India has reached an incredible level.

three meals can't be separated from Martha. It's just a routine operation. Indians eat popsicles with masala, roast sweet potatoes with masala, eat cheese with masala, and even sprinkle some masala when eating fruits. When some people from China go to india tourism to buy fruit on the street, vendors will not only help you peel and cut the fruit, but also sprinkle their own mashala on the fruit.

street snacks in India. Photography/small fish, source/figure worm creativity

Not only eating, but also drinking can't escape. Drinking boiled water and mashala is just the beginning. Indians will add mashala when drinking freshly squeezed fruit juice, mashala when drinking coconut juice, mashala when drinking Coca-Cola, mashala when drinking coffee, and mashala when drinking milk tea.

You can often see Martha teh tarik Tea Shop on street corners, railway stations and other densely populated places. Think about the smell of Martha teh tarik, how sour it is!

Indian masala spice tea. Photography /Alexander, source /Adobe Stock Picture Worm Creative

That is to say, Indians should add Martha whenever they eat or drink. Some people say that the Indian Emma Sarah, just like Sichuanese love Chili. In fact, the two can't be compared. If Sichuanese love Chili again, will they put Chili in their coffee?

so, masala is the soul of Indian cuisine.

Why do Indians like Martha

Indians didn't have a soft spot for Martha from the beginning.

In fact, the eating habits in India are not native. Before the Aryans invaded India, it is impossible to test what the ancient Indians ate, but when the Aryans entered the Indian mainland from Persia (Iran), they also brought the Middle East eating habits to India together. In ancient times when there was no refrigerator, people in the Middle East put spices on food to delay the deterioration period in order to preserve food. Therefore, the Indian diet changed its taste along with the Aryans, and all kinds of spices were mixed in the food. Until now, many Indian families can't afford refrigerators, and Masala can continue to play its special function of preserving food.

It is worth mentioning that the pepper, which is often used in Indian cuisine now, was brought to India and Asia from America by the Portuguese in the 16th century.

The spices brought by the western colonists from the New World are not only peppers, but also a variety of exotic spices and local spices, which makes Indians find that adding only one spice to food is too single, so why not mix a variety of spices? Sure enough, the mixed spices, that is, Martha really produced a special fragrance. Masala uses more than five kinds of spices, sometimes even ten or more. Pepper, black mustard seed, cumin, turmeric, fenugreek, ginger, garlic, cardamom, clove, coriander, cinnamon and other spices can combine different flavors. In India, there are many shops selling Masala, and there is usually a wooden board with Masala's formula written on it, ranging from dozens to hundreds.

Mashala's delicious food spread rapidly in India and became the "national quintessence" of Indians. Now, every Indian family has its own ancestral Masala, and it is not passed on from daughter to daughter. Since every woman will become a daughter-in-law after marriage, every Indian woman is a master of spice preparation.

married Indian women. Source/movie "Wrestle! Screenshot of Dad

Indians like to eat Masala, and there are practical reasons.

As we all know, people in Hunan like to eat Chili peppers, which is related to the warm and humid local climate. People need to eat all the food to get rid of "moisture". The climate in India is more humid than that in Hunan. The Indian Peninsula is located in the tropics and the northern hemisphere is subtropical, and the whole country in India belongs to the tropical monsoon climate. The highest temperature and humidity can exceed 5 degrees and the lowest temperature is a dozen or twenty degrees, which makes Indians have a high body temperature all year round. When it is high, they need to drink more water, and the "moisture" in their bodies is very heavy.

Masala contains a variety of spicy spices, such as pepper and pepper. Putting Martha in food and drinking water can not only promote appetite, but also "relieve fever and disperse qi".

There is no single language in India, and ten different languages and dialects can be heard in an area of 1 kilometers in Fiona Fang. Similarly, there are many changes in Indian food. However, due to the same hot and humid climate, even if Indian food is very diverse, it cannot be separated from Mashala.

street snacks in India. Photography/Small Fish, Source/Figure Worm Creativity

Thanks to Masala, an all-purpose condiment, Indians don't have soy sauce, hot sauce and monosodium glutamate at home.

In fact, Masala is not only a national food of Indians, but also popular in Pakistan and Bangladesh, and even appears in Middle Eastern cuisine.

when eating masala, the most important thing is not to pursue the so-called authentic taste, but how to skillfully use all kinds of spices to mix your favorite taste, so as to enjoy the food easily.

masala is not the same as curry

Many people mistakenly think that masala is curry, and even call it "Indian curry", but they are not the same thing.

Curry originated from Tamil kari, which was absorbed by English during the British colonial period and became an English vocabulary, and spread widely in the world. It is a cooked vegetable, meat or seafood with spices and salt. There are two main types of curry-vegetarian curry and non-vegetarian curry. Vegetarian curry consists of vegetables and curries made of mushrooms, lentils and pancakes, while non-vegetarian curry consists of curries made of meat, chicken and fish. Generally speaking, curry is fried food, which requires a lot of oil when cooking, but there are also curries that do not need to be fried.

curry has become one of the mainstream dishes in the Asia-Pacific region. In Japan, curry was localized and transformed into Japanese curry, and curry blocks were invented. In Thailand, many herbs are added to curry, which makes curry green and yellow. Thai curry is not mushy like India, but poured directly on the food, similar to the ingredients of curry sauce.

Indian curry and rice dishes. Photography /Joshua Resnick, source /Adobe Stock idea

Unlike curry, the word Masala comes from Urdu and is a red spice mixture used to add more flavor to dishes. Curry can be spicy or not, and how to mix it depends entirely on personal taste, while Martha is a little spicy without exception. According to the degree of spicy, Martha can be divided into two kinds: heavy taste and light taste, yellow and red belong to heavy taste, and green and white belong to light taste. Among them, Masala, which is heavy in taste, will be difficult to swallow if it is not Indian. Because it has such a slight odor, when it enters your mouth, it will make you feel salty and smelly, which makes you feel psychologically uncomfortable. For people in China, Martha's cooking is too biased, because it contains turmeric powder, looks yellow, and the juice is very sticky, which is not easy to accept.

It can be said that in order to increase the flavor of curry, masala can be added to curry, and the curry becomes spicy after adding masala. But on the other hand, you won't see anyone curry at Martha Larriga.

If China people want to taste India, the soul of food, they don't have to go to India, so they can buy the prepared Masala online. Usually, you will have three choices. The first one, of course, is to buy a variety of single spices to combine, such as ginger, garlic, clove, rapeseed, fennel, etc. Cooking a dish will probably use about ten kinds of spices; The second is to buy mixed masala powder, plus oil, yogurt, pepper, etc. at most; The third way is the most convenient, that is, to buy all the mixed masala powder, as long as you add meat, but also because you should pay attention to the spicy degree when buying. What do you think of the spicy degree? At the bottom of the packaging bag, there will be peppers showing that one pepper is slightly spicy, two peppers are medium spicy and three peppers are super spicy!

The raw material for making Masala, namely, fragrant rapeseed. Photography/beef brisket, source/creative idea

Although you can buy the mixed spice Masala in the market, it is full of fun if you can make it yourself, and you can also bring out your favorite flavor. What's even better is that both meat dishes and vegetables can show their elegance. Its method is also very simple. We can prepare 1 tablespoon cumin powder and 1? Spoon of vanilla seed powder, 1? Spoon of cardamom powder, 1? Spoon of black pepper, 1 tsp of cinnamon powder, half a spoonful of clove powder and half a spoonful of nutmeg powder, pour them into a bowl and mix them evenly. Put the finished spices in a sealed container and store them in a cool and dry place.

however, Indian masala is very strong, so we don't need to use too much when eating. Moreover, unlike curry powder, masala does not use colored spices, and it can add flavor by adding a little.

If there is an opportunity, let's go to India to taste Masala in person!

References:

1. Chen Ailing's Spice Flavor: Spices, Spices and Seasonings! A guide to the comprehensive application of graphic aroma collocation.

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They can't cook and eat anything else, and economic conditions don't allow it.