Transcripts
1. Introduction to This Class!: Hi. I'm sure Polly and I thank you for coming to my skill share class. I'm a local Indian cooking instructor, and I teach a lot of regional Indian cooking, some healthy cooking and some culinary medicine style classes. So I'm here today to teach five fundamental techniques of Indian cooking. We're going to start with five different videos that then you're gonna go home and recreate in your own home kitchen with your own appliances and gadgets, and you're going to try to take a picture of your results and upload them to the class Project gallery. And that's the format of our class. The five techniques. We're gonna go over our making of chutney and what a chutney is and what appliances you might need. For that. The second video is going to be about toasting, spices and grinding. The third video is making a staple flavoring agent that we use in some regional Indian cooking, using ginger and garlic and how to make a paste out of it. The fourth video is how to temper spices and what that really means, and the last video is just in basic life skills. And I think once you master these five techniques, you can read almost any Indian recipe a traditional one or an Indian inspired modern fusion recipe, and you'll be able Teoh, knock him out in your kitchen at the end of the class. When you go home and try bees cooking techniques, you'll upload the pictures to your class project gallery for feedbag, for troubleshooting and for fellow students to comment on.
2. Key Points and Tips: thanks to keep in mind in this skill share class, I have some tips for you. The first tip is that you will be learning a lot of terminology and technique, so don't be afraid you'll have plenty of time to watch the videos over and over if you are unfamiliar with the term, but I'll be going over all of them. Also, you won't need all the techniques in any one recipe. So these air all many techniques that I'm showing you, but you probably maybe two or three in anyone. Recipe. Sometimes you just need one. The second tip that I want to give you is that you're going to see me being, Ah, lot of appliances and maybe a fancy chef's knife that maybe you don't have in your kitchen . But don't worry about it. I've taught in a lot of people's homes, and I've used a lot of different kitchen appliances and gadgets, and they're kitchenware, and we've always found a way to achieve the same result. So don't worry. If you see some of the stuff that I have, you don't have to have it. I'll tell you if there's something that I really highly recommend, but I always find a shortcut to with a different agile. The third tip is that I want you to try to keep your ingredients on hand. You'll see that advice mentioned in a lot of cookbooks and cooking videos. It's nice to keep some of your in greens nearby and ready to go, because certain techniques require that you have them available instead of measuring them at the last minute so that your spices don't burn or your oil gets too hot, etcetera. So try to get your ingredients nearby before you get started. And also try to have a clean and Uncluttered kitchen, if you can. Just for kitchen safety measures, The last thing I want to tell you is I don't want you to give up. If you try one of these techniques the first time, and you're like this did not come out. What is wrong with this lady? I think that what you need to do is just try it again. These techniques take maybe 3 to 5 minutes of your time. They're not expensive. It's not like I'm gonna have you, you know, by all these ingredients for this fancy, expensive chicken curry dish, and then it not come out what I want you to do. And the purpose of this class was to get those fundamentals down and maybe repeat them a couple of times and then you'll have it down before you try one of those traditional authentic Indian recipes.
3. Chutneys: What and Where Are They Used In Indian Cooking!: we're ready to start. We're going to start with this first video on chutney, so ah, lot of people get confused about what if Jenny is? I find that in my classes, the students come in and think that Jenny is maybe something like a chunky marmalade or or a condiment for, like, a roast chicken. And that may be what attorney is here. But in India, chutneys air typically sauce consistency, so they're usually very smooth and pureed, and they could be either raw or cooked. Chutneys are considered condiments, and they're also dipping sauces so everyone loves the most is in. So if you are at a restaurant and you order so Moses and you like some of the chutneys and you want to recreate them at home, this is what you need to know. Um, and also just know that chutneys can be used for a lot of other things, not just Indian cooking. So I use this chutney that I'm about to show you as a spread in sandwiches as a dip for just even corn chips. I've taken it to dinner parties and served it as a dip, and people thought it was a dip for the chips when in fact it was for the samosa and they were like, Oh, I love it. So most people use blenders for smoothies or drinks margaritas, but I want you to know that lenders can be used for cooking and for chutneys and condiments . So that's what this technique is all about. Okay, we're ready to start, so the first thing to do is grind peanuts in your blender. Peanuts are the secret ingredient there, my mom's secret ingredient, and now it's no secret anymore. I've told you all hope she's OK with that, so we're gonna go get the peanuts and way throw those first in the blender. It's about 1/4 cop of peanuts. Typically, raw unsalted peanuts, if you confined them, are good. If you're peanut allergic, you can use on flower seeds. But it is nice to use something like that as a thickener, because if you don't use this you might find in restaurants they're thinner. The consistency of this Chinese center is because they don't have a thickening agent, so this is really not for flavor. It's more for thickening. We're gonna grind this up, so that was about 10 seconds in the splendor and just a little peanut powder is what you get. Shake it up and then we just add everything else. So it's super quick and simple, and you can use everything of your cilantro plants so cilantro you can coarsely chop and throw it all in here. You don't have to pluck off the leaves because in Indian cooking we we really eat everything. We try not to waste stuff. The's stocks have a lot of flavor as well. So why waste it? So you put all that in there? We put a little bit of lime juice, so about half alone. If you have a really hard line, a trick to soften it up is just to get in the microwave for about 10 seconds. Or you can use the palm of your hand and roll it around. Soften it up that way, or you can do both. We do use limes more than lemons in Indian cooking because they're saying, Listen, they're easy to squeeze and they just have a little bit of a different flavor then. Then we'll put some Serranos. Now you can use whatever chili you want or you can leave the chilly out so you can use a jalape o or you can use the Serrano chile or if you really want it, like if you really want it hot, you can use a Thai chili, which are a little bit more similar to the Indian chilies. And if you even want it harder than that, because use the Thai red chilies or cayenne. So I've just got a little bit of heat in there and then some sugar and some salt and some ginger, so I don't need to peel my ginger. I'm gonna polarize it in this machine and same with any blender, and you only need a little bit of ginger. But I am gonna coarsely chop it just to help it out a little bit so I don't peel it. Just throw a few little pieces in there and pour about 1/4 cup in of water, and we're gonna blend this thing away. There you go, the beautiful green color. By the way, this is actually really good chutney, also on roasted squash. Really tasty. It's almost like a cilantro pesto, but not quite, and thats chutney keeps in the refrigerator for about a week or you can make a double batch and freeze it in ice cubes and then pop out ice cube pieces and stick him in his a book. And then you have chutney whenever you want. So the bottom line is that you wanna have a thickening agent, you don't want to put too much water. Now, that's really easy to say in this nice little blender. But now I'm gonna show you how to do it. In this other blunder that is probably like a typical 30 to $40 blender. And I'm gonna show you why that particular blender works as well. But you need to know a couple of things about. Okay, so in this blender, it zone ost a riser blender. I think, you know, typically used for ice crushing or drinks, etcetera, but notice that the shape of it has a tapered base. So what happens is when you when you have a blender with a wider base, you end up having to put a little bit more water than you would want to get this pureed consistency. So the tapered blender is really nice to have. Now, if you don't have this and you have just a regular but blender with a wide mouth bass. That's okay. You'll just have a little bit more water to get that consistency that you're looking for and you'll have to scrape down a little bit periodically. So we're gonna the same thing here, put in the peanuts and then put everything else than okay, so peanuts go in. First, give that a grind. So here's our second bunch of cilantro. I might chop it up a little bit finer just because I know that the motor on this wonders notch as you throw all that in and I'm a messy cook, I make a mess. I start clean, but I end up missy, and that's OK. Squeeze a lime again about half a line and our salt and are a little bit of sugar and our little bit of ginger. So people think, um that Oh, I I don't like Phil entre. You know, I I'm just not a fan of cilantro. I have given this recipe to so many people that think they don't like saunter. Only tasting like that was really good. That didn't taste like cilantro. I don't know what it is about it, but I think the ginger and the line perhaps take away that heavy, earthy cilantro flavor, Uh, and maybe the heat of it, too. So here's some chili. Speaking of heat, throw that in and lastly, the water. So again, start with 1/4 cup and you may need a little bit more in the other one. We didn't use more than 1/4 cup water, but let's see how much more we need in this one. All right, ready? So in this kind of lender, we just pause a few times, stir the base through the contents a little bit, and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have to add water. I'm gonna show you what it looks like so that you can see how dry it is. So I know that I need a little more water, but I'm still going to try to wait. It's when my blender starts sounding like it's not doing anything. That's when I know I need to add a little more water. So let's go. All right. Just a touch of water, I think, is what we need quite thick. Probably add a tablespoon at a time. So wrong with So as you can see We've used probably about the same amount of time as we did in the vitamins, but I'm still seeing flecks of green. And that's because it's just not polarized. Totally. So I'm gonna still let it go for a while. It may not ever get totally Palmer's, but the taste still is the same. So let's try are. And I think I'm lazy and I got to be done with this now. No, I'm just kidding. It looks pretty good. There's still some flex in there. I'm gonna poured into the bowl so you can see the difference between the two. That's and there you go. They look pretty similar to me. Um, and so you could do the cell. So please try it. Upload your picture on the class project gallery and let me know about any difficulties you have and what you think of the final taste
4. Toasting and Grinding Spices and What Does "Masala" Mean?: okay, we're onto the next technique. This one is getting into the nitty gritty about spices because I'm sure you're all wondering why hasn't she talked about spices yet? So we're going to show you today how to toast spices in a dry skillet and then what to do with those toasted spices? And I just want to walk you through the steps and you'll see that it just takes a few minutes. And so, if you see the step by step instructions, you can do this at home with any spice blend that you want for any recipe. So I'm using a caster and skillet here, but you can use a nonstick skillet. You can use a stainless steel skillet you can use really any skillet that you have. It doesn't matter because we're dry roasting. We're roasting, so that means we're doing it dry. We're not putting any oil, so I'm gonna turn on the heat right here, and I usually turn it on to medium heat, always to start with, and then I can play around with it after that, and I'm feeling some heat coming from the pants. I know that I'm probably getting close to the time that can put the spices on. And I'm gonna start with cinnamon sticks. They're bigger and coarser and less likely to burn cause they're bigger. This is a stage, but the leaf and it's an Indian bay leaf. You can leave this out if you don't have it handy. It doesn't lend as strong of a flavor as this actual bark Simon and that now I'm gonna add everything else in right now because it's safer to start earlier rather than later and possibly burning them. So I've got in here some green cardamom pods. Okay, they are the part. So that's that. Black seeds air inside those pods, you contos the whole thing. Or you can just toast the seeds if you want. It's kind of a pain to peel them, and so I just toast the whole thing. It's totally edible. The, uh, these roundish seeds are called coriander seeds. This is black peppercorns, and these all belong ones are cumin sea, which maybe you're familiar with. So keep stirring this around because you want the heat Teoh spread evenly. Now, when I'm looking for here, is not something visual. It's more through your nose, so you will begin smelling the spices, and once they're really frequent, there pretty much done. If you get to a point where there thes air darkening a little bit, the coriander will tend to darken first. And the cumin, they're done. So I'm almost at the point. I've achieved some of this browning. I don't want it to get much darker than that. And I'm starting to smell the fragrance to notice that the pan is not smoking. You don't see any soak, right? So that's a good heat. If you're panna smoking, it's been to hot. So let's turn off the heat and moving away. You're gonna keep stirring till you have it on a cold plate. Well, that was a little hot. So you have these toasted spices that smell amazing. They don't look like they're toasted, but some of them do, and we're gonna let that cool, and then we're gonna grind them. So moving on to grinding those spices that we just hosted on the cast iron skillet. I have them right here. They're nicely cooled. I called him for about 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and they're ready to grant in my spice. Grander. So about spice grinders. They can be coffee grinders, but if you already use them for coffee, what I suggest is you take a piece of the like, stale bread or, like a crew Thanh or anything in anything like that, and grind up the bread in there and then discard the bread. And it really does absorb some of that coffee flavoring. And you can do that same method if you're doing it for spices and you don't want your coffee to taste like cardamom, although that sounds kind of good. So I'm gonna transfer the spices onto a flexible Matt because it's just easier to put into the spice grinder. You can also use a funnel if you have or a flexible cutting board. A lot of people have those now technology, and then I'm going to funnel these in to my spice grinder very carefully. Now that amount is small, Um, but it's a good amount for a spice vendor like this. If if I were you and I don't make spices a lot, spice blends a lot. Um, I would probably double the recipe, and it will easily fit in this amount and grind really well because the thing about spice grinders is if you just have a small amount of spices in here, you're actually not going to get the fine grind that you would if you had a little bit more quantity in there. I think this is a good amount to show you the grind that we're looking for, but we're trying to go for the most finally grind powder possible. So snap the lid on and go ahead and grind. I kind of do rotated a little bit like that, because sometimes the surface area is not broad enough to get the smaller quantities. So all kind of rotated sometimes like that while I'm bringing theme, so as you can see, it's still got some course pieces in there. Ah, lot of that's from that Indian Bay leaf that tends to have hard time grinding. Same with the cardamom. You just keep going, all right, so do this over a plate because you might have some spillage, depending on the brand of spice grinder you have, and I like to have these little spatulas around or or just a metal spoon would be fine. But look at how finally ground that powder is. That's really what you're going for him, and it smells incredible. You guys okay, so let's pour it into here and that I just try to get every precious little last bit right , And that, my friends, is a spice blend. This one was called Garam Masala, which maybe you've heard of. It's pretty common spice blend in Indian cooking. Gotta means warming. Masala just means spice blend, so this is a warming spice blend. It's used in lots of Curries, um, lots of meat Curries, vegetable Curries, some lentil curry as well. And sometimes it's used in Indian inspired dishes as well. It's great on non pizza, actually, and, um, these are roasted spices, so they're cooked and they are fragrant. They will last in your refrigerator or in a airtight container at room temperature for about 2 to 3 months. Um, the way you can check it is you open the jar. If it's fragrant, it's good. If it's lost its potency, then you may want to think about getting a new batch. So if you don't have a spice Grainer or a coffee grinder and you want to do these spices, what do you dio so you can make him in a food processor, so food processes are generally big. If you have a food processor, it's probably the bigger one, and a lot of times those come with attachments with a smaller one, so you can use that. If you don't have that, then use the big one and you'll need to triple or quadruple the amount of spices. Because if you just put this much in your food processor, it really will be hard to get it grind to such a fine powder like that. It will take either a long time or it may not even get done. So go ahead and just quadruple the amount of spices that you saw here on and try it in the food processor. You can also try a high speed blender just like you saw in the other video that will work, but again, you need a larger quantity than just this. This quantity is really just for about one recipe. I would do just this quantity if you can at home for this specific lesson. However, once you get good at it, make a whole bunch because you're doing the work anyway, and in the last a long time in your refrigerator or pantry so it's worth it
5. A Key Ingredient: Ginger-Garlic Paste and What's A Curry Anyway?: welcome back. I have the next technique, but I want to show you and this one I love and I have been wanting to tell people about it for a long time on a video. So this is the greatest opportunity. I think it's one of those valuable things and the easiest thing to know about when you're making some Kurdi's of traditional Indian Curries. Now I do use this condiment also in other kinds of cuisine. So I'll tell you about that in a moment. So the pace is just called ginger and garlic paste, and sometimes you'll see that in an Indian recipe written out, or sometimes you'll see it written like okay. One teaspoon minced garlic one teaspoon minced ginger Well, Any time you see that, you can just do what I'm about to show you and call that a substitute another place I use. This paste is in Asian cooking, so in a stir fry or in a sauce like a marinade or teriyaki sauce that you want to make it home and the ingredients are soy sause or we seen or fish sauce or anything that's an Asian sauce, and they ask for chopped up garlic and ginger. Well, if you keep a little bit of this in your fridge or your freezer, you will always have it ready to go for all Asian cooking. So let me just get right to it and show you how to do it. So I I particularly like this tool. If you don't have this tool, you don't need it. Any kind of greater will work, but this is a great greater to get the pace that you want. So it's a micro plane. Greater. It's got slaps that are really on the wider signed because you've seen other graders, micro plane graders that have really small ones that are meant for, like Parmesan cheese or not, mag or chocolate. This one's gonna have larger, larger holes. And if you don't have this tool, then you can use a garlic press, so I'll show you that as well. But first, let's concentrate on this. I have some ginger here, and it's got the skin on so ginger root you can buy it in the grocery department and produce section eyes. Keep the skin on. When I do this, I don't feel like I need to peel it, however, if you feel like you're Ginger has a really thick skin and it's annoying you. You can use a spoon the back of spoon and peel it, so it's pretty easy to do. Just apply a little pressure and there you go off course. You can also use a regular vegetable peeler, but usually you're not going to use a big old chunk, so you just need to peel off a little bit around the little knobs. It's a little bit of a pain you can get right to it, or you can cut the little knobs off, and you cut this off to make it easier to. So let's just do that, show you. We only want to use a little about this much, and then we're gonna grade it, and what you get is really almost a puree. It's like a wet puree and because ginger Sophie iris, the fibers do you get stuck in this once in a while. Each sees a brush when you wash it off to get the fibers out of the holes on, and then on top of that you'll do the garlic. And so I've got some peeled garlic. Put it right on top of it and just be slow and steady and you won't injure yourself. These aren't that sharp. My hate, my thumb is going right on top of the holes. It's not sharp. That being said, be careful. And so what I get on the back is again more repast. You can use your knife and scrape it off that and there you have a good no tablespoon or so of ginger garlic paste. You can use the garlic press, which maybe some of you have, and um, you'll probably get similar results. It's just a little bit more finicky. So you put your garlic clove in your press like that, and you just press it through. My only thing with this is that you have to do it with each garlic looks, so you get the same result with the garlic. But you're trying to do a few, and so you have to clean out the inside of it every time. Not a big deal, but it is another way. However, you can't use ginger in here, so if you're doing the ginger and you don't have this, you just need to mince it up. So the ginger garlic pays that I make. I keep a big large that, if you will, in my refrigerator, and then it lasts for about three months in the refrigerator and 6 to 9 months in the freezer. It's preserved, really with nothing. You can add a little turmeric to it to give it a little yellow color. Or sometimes organic ginger has a very yellow color to it as well. I like to use this paste in almost all Curries on. That means any any dish, any lentil, vegetable or meat dish with a gravy. So Indian, of course, but any meat, lentil or vegetable dish with a gravy? What is a curry? I mentioned curry and how you can use ginger and garlic paste in a curry. But what really is a curry? I get that question a lot of times, and a lot of times people think curry is curry powder or curry. Is any Indian food or curry is just chicken curry? No curry really refers to the majority of Indian dishes, but they're usually the ones that have some kind of gravy, and usually the great becomes from on onion bays, sometimes with ginger and garlic, sometimes with tomato, but it is a wet sort of gravy and paste, and that is the base off a curry, and anything can go in a curry, lentils, vegetables and meats. There are other dishes in Indian cuisine, like yogurt dishes, breads, grilled meats, those air, not Currys. But sometimes they're referred to as a curry. The other thing that can be confusing about Curries is curry leaves, and we're gonna talk about that in another technique. But curry leaves are different than curry, so don't buy curry powder if you can help it, because it's not going to be authentic. You can just use curry leaves, or I can show you how to make the spice blends in the videos. And that's what you need and these techniques from these videos, or what you need to make an actual curry
6. Tarka: Tempering Spices is Easier Than You Think!: all right, we're here for the next part. The next technique on the series of the most fundamental techniques of Indian cooking. This one's really important, and you'll see in a lot in recipes, Indian recipes and also some Indian inspired recipes. It's kind of a way to get a little bit of that Indian flavor with spices without doing everything else, like making ah, wet masala, which is Ah spice blend or making the dry spice blend or without making the ginger and garlic paste. For example, there's a recipe on my website that is a tomato soup. It's a winter tomato soup, but then you pet a little bit of this technique in it, and it gives it a little bit of flavor. So the technique I'm talking about is called the Hindi word, for it is Sarka T A R K A. And really, it is, um, really simple. It's just that you have tow figure out how to do it so you heat oil in a pan and preferably and actually you can do this in any pan again. You can do it in a non stick skillet. You can do it in a stainless skillet you can also do it in a little saucepan like this. So if you do it in a skillet like this, it would be, Ah, the process would be where you heat oil. You answer spices to the oil, the spices flavor the oil, and then you use that oil as the base for every step. Every future step in that rusty now sometimes unauthorized oven Indian recipe might say to do it at the beginning of the rest me. So if that's the case, I would do it in a big pan like this. And then you add all your other ingredients and you have a curry. Sometimes they'll say to make your curry and then junior thangka and a separate pot and then pour that oil into the final dish so it really doesn't matter. It's up to the author. I've always been taught to do it this way. From the start, we're going to start the heat to again medium heat, and you want to be really careful. It's probably a good idea. Start on low meaning when you're doing this technique for the first time, because when your oil gets hot that there's a fine line of when it gets too hot and when it's not hot enough, and you kind of have to look for when is that right? Time to put in those spices, and I'm gonna show you that. So we have some oil here. Any kind of vegetable is great. Do not use olive oil in this technique. You don't want to heat it up too hot, first of all, because it will smoke and it's not Olive. All does not have a high smoke point, so I like safflower oil, grapeseed oil, vegetable oil, canola oil and I put enough to coat the bottom. Now, if you feel like you just don't want to use that much oil or butter and Indian cooking for health reasons, you can always strain out the extra later. But you mean enough to Eli's coat the bottom of the pan so that they actually cook the spices. So I've coated the bottom, as you can tell, and that's probably enough. So looking at this heat right now, I'm looking at the oil, and I don't see it shimmering or waving. You'll see what I mean because as soon as it starts shimmering or waving a little bit. That is hot enough. You'll also see perhaps a little bit of smoke going up. And that may have been a little drop of water. When it splatters like that, you know that it's a drop for now. I think that's pretty hot. I'm gonna lower the heat and I do see it shimmering a little bit. I don't know if you can tell, and once you do this more, you'll be able to tell a bit more. The way to test the oil is you take a pinch of cumin seeds and you put him in there. Do they sizzle like that? Move around. Yes, that is the perfect heat. If they move around and crazy and start darkening immediately, you have to discard the oil and start over again. OK, so this is a good heat. I'm gonna put all the rest of it in. I'm gonna put my mustard season those sizzle and those pop mustard seeds pop when they start popping, you can add anything else. You can add curry leaves, which are something I'll tell you about in a little bit, but they're gonna splatter someone to keep a lid nearby. Okay. And that's done, you gotta turn it off the curry leaves conducting a national problem. But if you're cumin seeds, get black, then you probably need to redo the oil. But now this oil is a tempered. It's tempered with these spices and seasoned well, and you can add this to any recipe, and it'll add a lot of flavor now in circa in this technique. Ah, lot of I'm leaving this here, but it's going to get burned. But, ah, if if you're doing this, you probably want to go ahead and add the rest of ingredients right away. Otherwise, you're cumin Cesaire still gonna get too dark. So I'm just telling you that this is where you would stop and he would add the rest of your ingredients. But on a side note, if you're doing other types of darker, you can put in anything. Even put garlic clove pieces you chopped up garlic, whole garlic. Slice it up. Put it in there. Ah, lot of South Indian recipes put in lentils, actually uncooked dry lentils like wooded lentil or China doll in this for texture. Not so much for flavor. And then, as you saw, I put some curry leaves in there, which adds a lot of flavor, and you can find them in certain Indian supermarkets in the produce section. Or you can try to grow them yourself. You can probably order plants online. You also don't have to have them. Not everybody has them, and not every region of India has create leaves. So this is a very regional dependent technique. I have family from that live everywhere all over India, and I have my in law side of the family that live in all different parts of India. So I've seen a lot of different Indian cooking in a lot of different regional cooking, and I think that this DACA technique is different from region to region. So that's how you make that. Now this is gonna be your most difficult task to do at home. So again, the key points of this is to start low on your hate. Watch the oil carefully, keep your ingredients nearby and keep a lid nearby if you're adding anything fresh, such as the crate leaks, in fact, keeping a lid nearby anyway, when you're doing this the first time, because when the mustard seeds pop that can be a little bit scary to some people. And the last tip for this technique is that when you move when you're doing this at home for this project, you probably won't be using this oil to eat with, because it will sit on the stove without any other ingredients in it in an old barn a little bit. So I just want you to practice it just to have that practice down. When you're ready and you're ready to approach a recipe, then you'll have all your other ingredients, like your onions in your tomato and your ginger garlic paste in your chickpeas or your lamb or anything that you want ready to go to put in. And that's the technique that is one of the most important techniques of Indian cooking that I wanted to share with you all.
7. Good Gravy for a Curry? You Need a Few Basic Knife Skills: the next videos on knife skills and nice skills actually aren't that important. Anything cooking, because most of the time you Indian food, it just doesn't look that beautiful. Maybe smells great, but it's not about presentation. So really, die skills are important Indian cooking for the flavor and texture in grainy dishes like I mentioned, the curry dishes that have gravy you that gravy is obtained by properly dicing your onion. And that's what I really want to talk to you about is what to do with onions because a lot of Indian recipes for main dishes and Curry's call for, ah lot of onions and growing up, I didn't realize that onions or not, that commonly used in Western cooking they are used, but it's usually maybe half an onion or or maybe a whole onion or pearl onions. The amount of onions we use is insane. It's just so much that a lot of times my students will be like tearing And, you know, I've taught Children and they're like, this is a lot of onions, So what can you do, um, about onions and why do you need them? It's because you need that gravy so I'm gonna show you how to do. And I'm gonna tell you that you can use a food processor if you have one. If you need four onions, you know, for any particular meal. So the first thing is, um, you can use any kind of a noon you can use a white and noon or a yellow onion or arrest. Um, you don't need to use the Vidalia sweet onions there a little bit sweeter. But any any onion is gonna be fine. And you're gonna take your onion and set it on your counter, and you take the stem and the route off first with the skin on. So whoops. So I have a slippery onion. Obviously get rid of all your little extra peel. So I'm taking both ends off, and I'm just gonna peel it like this if I needed it whole. But you can also cut it in half. Look, I cut it lengthwise. Okay, so we're not going to cut it crosswise. You're gonna cut it lengthwise along the green, and then I it's easier to peel. Okay, So peel the I am Set it aside. Take your next one. Usually I have at least two big onions per recipe. So I do this process all at once, said Amal aside, And then I move on to the chopping, and once you practice, you'll get better. And as you see, I also have a Japanese nice chef's knife. I didn't grow up with a Japanese knife. I grew up with a $2 serrated knife from the dollar store. I think that's my mom's favorite knife, and she puts out great Indian cooking and so does my mother in law. And so you don't need an expensive knife is my point. But if you are gonna use a big chef's knife like this, you've got to make sure sharp and that's another class for another day. Knife skills in general. But you've gotta have a sharp knife. The sharper the knife, the safer you are. So then let's take our onion and I've got angled towards me. This something I learned a long time ago. I'm not a trained chef, and I didn't go to culinary school, but I learned with lots of practice, so you have it sort of angle towards you, like at a 45 degree angle, and you take your knife and you're holding it like this. And your left hand or your non dominant hand is in the clause shape. Okay, you're gonna hold it like this, and you're gonna do as thin longitudinal cuts as you can as thin as you can without sacrificing your knuckles or your nails. Now, a lot of people want to hold a knife like this. That's OK, but you're gonna have a lot more stability if you hold it like that. So just practice and I'm not going fast. If I worked in a commercial kitchen and I had 30 million onions to do, I have to go a lot faster than I am. But I'm in a home kitchen generally, and I don't have to do that many onions. So I take my time, and then what you do, you've got your all your longitudinal cuts. You're gonna rotate it that way, which is comfortable for me, and then you're going to do these cuts now, These you don't have to have as many. Now, your hand on top, your left hand can be like this, or it can be like this right now. I'm gonna have it like that. But when I get to the very top layer, I'm gonna probably do this. I think I could one more. So about I would say 3 to 4 cuts that way. Now, as you noticed, I didn't go all the way to the root end, so I've got it all intact. If I went all the way to the root end, it would just split apart. And it would be very hard to now do the next step, which is to just chop notice. I have to take my hand off the cutting board. I have to take my hand off the cutting word because of the height of the onion. Sometimes you'll see on professional food networks that they'll just go through like this. Well, that can work if you have a smaller vegetable with less height and then I tilt that little piece over, just go like and I've got a little bit left here. I don't want to waste it. I'm just gonna go right through. And if you feel like when you're done, you have a few irregular pieces. You can dio what might be called the radial cut. I believe where you just go like this feels fancy. Okay, so that's half a nun, Iun. Probably about 3/4 the cup, maybe about a cup, and then you can do the 2nd 12 That is about enough for one curry. I hope that slipped. So if you do have a slip like that, put it away. This can be dangerous. You don't want to cut yourself. Just put it away. You can get to it later. And down there we go. You're all set. So let's say you don't have the time for this. Um, when you're making a bunch Indian food and you need a lot onions, you can do it in the food processor. Just don't process it so much that it becomes a puree, and it's a lot of liquid. If you do that, it's OK. It's just that you're gonna have a different process when you actually saute the onions. So that is it for knife skills.
8. Conclusion: Try These At Home!: thank you so much for visiting me at the skill share lesson for the five most important techniques of Indian cooking. So I hope you learned a lot, and I hope you go home and try each of these videos. Remember their short and simple and quick, though a couple of them might be quite technical. So take your time and practice them a couple times. If you have to upload your pictures and any comments or questions at the Project gallery for this lesson, and I'll be available for troubleshooting with you and helping you through each of these techniques, please subscribe to my Web site at Chef's Kitchen dot com Chef's Kitchen with an S and you'll get weekly recipe updates. And you can try some of these techniques in any of the recipes that are on that website. One recipe that you can use all these techniques in is this chicken curry that we love. It's gorgeous with a little chop, cilantro and but ginger garlic sin here. The minced onions air in here Roasted spice blend is in here, so you've got all of that in one dish. But like I said, you don't have to have all those techniques in all Indian. Thank you so much for coming to class today.
Shefaly Ravula, Shef's Kitchen Classes
