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Comment by philodelta | Hacker News Reader

Not to claim to be an expert in indian cooking (anglicized or otherwise), but I make a lot of curry from scratch, and I gotta say that featured video had a pretty excellent recipe. Entertaining but you can also tell he's an experienced cook.

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The recipe is indeed not bad, but one thing that trips people up with Indian cooking is that store brought garam masala is pretty terrible. Using garam masala from the supermarket isn’t any different from using a jar of curry paste from the supermarket. Aside from the issue of quality, it goes stale, and when that happens the more subtle flavors fade first. Leaving you with something that is essentially cardamom powder, which can easily overpower a dish. For anybody that wants to get into Indian cooking, I’d suggest they always make their own masala mix at home, because it’s not difficult and the differences are pretty significant.

If the pre-mixed powder goes stale, is that also a problem for the other spices you'd use to make it 'fresh'? Just wondering because I don't see how that fixes the problem, unless there's some interaction between the ingredients.

I guess one benefit is you can put more of a particular spice in if it lost its zing.

I'm speaking from someone who uses ground spices in jars/bags, I typically don't use fresh (apart from nutmeg).

You keep cumin seeds, and then toast and freshly grind them the day you need them.

Same with coriander, cardamom, anise, cinnamon, dried chilis, etc.

whole spices preserve the essential oils better when whole.

roasting them whole and grinding them before use brings out the flavors since most of the essential oils have not evaporated.

Yep, that's the bit I was missing. I think a lot of us just buy pre-ground so it's important to make that point.

It probably explains why I pour a few tablespoons of cumin in everything (apart from it being great).

Dried herbs/spices can be thought of and treated much like coffee beans.

Keep them in cool airtight containers in the dark. Only buy enough for a few months, many lose their potency by about 12 months or so. (It varies)

Avoid buying them from supermarkets and other big-box type stores. If you have a local asian supermarket, they probably sell a lot fresher and better quality stuff. If you don't have one, you might be able to order them online instead.

Grinding/roasting your own is better, but if that's too difficult a good asian supermarket will have pre-ground stuff that's also pretty good.

Like coffee beans, they lose their potency faster once ground.

I'd also add that going to your local specialty grocery, you'll probably find that the spices there are actually cheaper as well, sometimes significantly.

I make it once every week or two, so they don’t have much time to go stale. The stuff on the shelf at the supermarket seems to have a much longer time in between being roasted and ground, and eventually finding its way into a shopping trolly. The bigger problem with ground spice mixtures though, is that they go stale at different rates. If the ground cumin seeds you have lose a little of their punch, it’s fine because you can just put more in. With spice mixtures, you can start out with something that’s well balanced, but the lighter flavors will start to fade, leaving behind the more potent ones (like clove or cardamom, in the case of garam masala). So when you go to use it, you taste the curry and it doesn’t have enough spice in it, so you add a little more and all of a sudden it has the over-powering biter after taste of too much cardamom, without much else.

The other benefit is that it’s obviously just going to taste better, or at least more the way you prefer it, if you make it yourself. Maybe I’m a weirdo though, because I don’t buy any pre-ground spices aside from chili (which keeps really well), and turmeric (which - in powder form - is used more for color than flavor).

Thanks for clarifying. There are a few that are great to get pre-ground like onion/garlic powder and paprika, which are a little harder to replicate at home and have a different flavour profile than their fresh counterparts. I do need to try and branch out more with whole spices in the future though.

I really like curries, but it's one of the dishes I haven't made much effort to do properly at home yet (my recent Japanese curry doesn't count because they use English-style curry powder).

Personally I think the SEA curries are a bit more forgiving than the Indian ones. Indian curries use a lot of dried ingredients, where as in SEA they tend to use pastes made from fresh spices (in Indonesia and Malaysia this is called bumbu) as the basis for a lot of their cooking. Which gives you a little more room for error when it comes to quantities for most things. You just grind everything together with your onions (or usually shallots), fry it off a bit, and get on with the rest of the recipe. If you add a little too much fresh galangal, it’s not much of a problem, but it’s a lot easier to throw the balance of a dish off with dried powders.

[Read in Nat's voice] I'd bung in the garam masala at the end, champion (after turning the heat off).

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