Friday, October 17, 2008

Making Your Own Garam Masala

One of the things that I really like about Indian food is the immense variety of flavors.  When making some dishes, a key ingredient is garam masala, or hot spice, where hot refers to high temperature.  Of course most garam masala recipes I've tried tend to have a nice spicy-hot flavor, which is why whe I cook with it I don't use as much a recipe indicates. 

This garam masala recipe is one that I find easy to make and very flavorful.  And while it might seem a lot of work to make what appears to be a small amount, a little goes a long way.  So here is the recipe from my recipe archives.  While I find recipes online and in books, I tend to play around with them and try to add my own touch to them.

Garam masala is a mix of spices whose prime ingredient is cinnamon and is used to flavor a lot of vegetable curries.
  1. 3” cinnamon stick
  2. ¼ cup coriander seeds
  3. 2 tablespoons cumin seeds
  4. teaspoon black pepper corns
  5. 4 to 6 cloves
  6. 1 to 2 bay leaves
  7. 3 to 4 star anise pods (optional)
Toast all ingredients in a small skillet over medium-low heat for several minutes until mix becomes fragrant and seeds turn several shades darker, but not burnt (try doing this at first on a small amount so you get the hang of it).

Grind in spice mill or coffee grinder (note that once you mix spices in a coffee grinder once, never again use it for coffee—I have several coffee grinders, one for coffee the other for spice mixes).  Store the spice mix in an air-tight container in the fridge for a month or place in freezer for up to a year.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, I like your blog. Check out how I make garam masala (with piccies!) on my blog: http://mangosoup.blogspot.com/2009/08/making-spice-masalas-garam-masala.html

Btw, I have a vegetarian cookbook coming out soon, in which every recipe can be made vegan...look at my blog if you are interested.

tjclancy said...

Hi Jenni. Thank you for stopping by to take a look. In my profession as a software developer I've had the chance to make a number of friends who are from India and this is what got me into my passion for cooking vegetarian Indian food--by far my favorite. I checked out your blog and I really liked it. I look forward to reading your cookbook!