the fastest way to git gud at indian cooking
do not ask, "Is this correct?". instead ask, "Is this yummy?"
big brain mentality to get what you want by not trying to get what you want
This is the spiel I give at the beginning of my in-person cooking class, and I repeat it endlessly ad nauseum because it’s just that important. Even if your ultimate goal is to replicate restaurant or grandma food, you’ll get there faster if you cook simple food every day.
stop trying to make food taste like restaurant or grandma
Don’t try to make menu items from restaurants: chicken tikka masala, samosa chaat, lamb biryani, mango lassi, all that stuff. Also don’t try to make food that tastes exactly like how your grandma makes it back in India/Pakistan/Bangladesh/Jackson Heights. You’ll just end up frustrated. You’ll buy 8 different expensive spices for each recipe, go hunt for rare magic herbs in specialty stores, and cook with lackluster produce. Your grandma’s methi in Mumbai is not your methi in Manhattan. Each recipe will have multiple complex stages. You’ll spend hours on each meal, and when it fails you won’t know why.
Instead, buy some essential spices, master the basic techniques of Indian cooking, learn a few simple weeknight recipe templates, and then cook for yourself and your friends/partner/housemates, multiple times a week. Learn to diagnose and fix problems as they arise. Get used to how cumin sputters in a pan, and how that’s different from how mustard seeds pop. Get familiar with the smell and taste of burned garlic. Develop intuition for how long you can leave onions unattended before they burn. Force yourself to rescue a nearly-failed subzi, returning victorious, shaken but not yet slinking back to Seamless.
i’m here to help you
In upcoming posts I’ll tell you exactly which spices to buy, what the basic techniques are, how to practice them, and give you recipe templates you can use to cook with a range of easily-available groceries.
success is if you cooked today and it was yummy
Don’t define success as, “This tastes exactly like how I remember it.” You might not get there for years. When you do, it’ll often be by accident and you won’t understand how it happened nor how to replicate it.
Instead, define success as, “I cooked today, using some Indian cooking techniques, and my food tasted good to me and my guests”. Focus on the input. Buy produce that actually looks good and cook it with the techniques and templates from this blog. Make and eat food that meets your nutritional goals, fits your macros, leaves you feeling healthy and, um, nurtures your gut microbiome lol. Indian food is a powerful technology for making vegetables incredibly appetizing, which makes it a powerful technology for producing great poops.
or ignore this advice, as long as you’re cooking a lot
The advice in this post isn’t sacred. It’s designed to make beginners cook a lot without getting discouraged. I’ve found that it works for most people because most people are motivated by cheap and healthy food that they can cook easily and quickly. But if you’re more motivated by making restaurant/grandma/royal Indian food then go for it. I’ve certainly gone through phases where I’ve worked incredibly hard and done tens of iterations to perfect things like kathi rolls and home-fermented yogurt and butter chicken. I won’t lie to you, getting good takes grit and perseverence, and no amount of technical insight on this blog can change that. You need a lot of reps. Do whatever it takes to get those reps, and try to stay honest about whether the food tastes good. That’s it.