

Why tamarind brings every flavour together
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The first thing my grandmother did when she entered the kitchen each morning was say a quick prayer and soak a ball of tamarind. Be it sambar, rasam, kuzhambu, kootu or thogayal, tamarind extract was a must, and starting the soak early meant the tamarind extract was ready by the time cooking began. True to that lineage, tamarind features in almost every south Indian inspired recipe I have shared in this column over the years.
I think of it as the ingredient that rounds off everything else and brings harmony to a dish. Salt, heat, sweetness, it balances them all like the backbone bassist in a jazz band, the one nobody notices, but without whom the rest of the band wouldn’t sound right.Indian cooking uses acid in so many forms that a whole book could be written on Indian souring agents alone. In a face-off between lemon juice and tamarind, the dominant acid in tamarind is tartaric, not citric, which is why it tastes different from a squeeze of lime.
Tartaric has a rounder, slower sourness, while citric is sharp and quick. It is also why tamarind plays well with jaggery, palm sugar and dates. The home-economics case is simple: tamarind is always at hand once you stock a block.
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