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IndiSpice-Atelier

Field notes

Articles

Recipes tell you what. These tell you how — the technique underneath the cooking, the ingredients worth the trouble, and the kitchen kit that is worth buying.

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Three articles, in this order, if you are new to cooking Indian food at home.

  1. Two people at a kitchen table comparing a bowl of dry ground spice blend with a bowl of wet ground masala paste, whole cinnamon and dried chillies beside them

    Step 1

    What Is Masala? The Words Indian Recipes Assume You Know

    Masala just means a mixture of spices — not a dish, not a sauce, not one thing. What garam, chaat and chai masala each are, why garam masala contains no chilli, and plain definitions for tadka, bhuna and dum.

  2. A cook stirring a large pot of curry at the hob while friends eat and talk at the kitchen table behind him

    Step 2

    How to Make Curry: The Order Indian Cooks Actually Use

    Most Indian gravies are one base with different things added to it. The order the stages go in, why each one needs a different heat, and the single visual signal — the oil separating — that tells you the base is finished.

  3. An engraved steel masala dabba open on a wooden table, its katoris holding chilli powder, turmeric, cumin, mustard and coriander, with the lid resting alongside

    Step 3

    The Masala Dabba: What Goes In It, and Where to Keep It

    What an Indian spice box actually holds, why the seven vary by household, and the one thing almost everyone gets wrong about where to put it — kept by the stove, spices die faster.

Technique

The methods a recipe assumes you already know — the order things go in the pan, and why.

A cook stirring a large pot of curry at the hob while friends eat and talk at the kitchen table behind him

Technique

How to Make Curry: The Order Indian Cooks Actually Use

Most Indian gravies are one base with different things added to it. The order the stages go in, why each one needs a different heat, and the single visual signal — the oil separating — that tells you the base is finished.

A cook leaning over a large pan of curry at the hob, watching thin gravy run straight off a raised wooden spoon

Technique

How to Thicken a Curry (Without Flour)

A watery curry is usually an unfinished base, not a missing thickener. Why the cornflour instinct makes it worse, the seven things Indian kitchens actually use, and how to add yoghurt without it splitting.

A woman in a kitchen holding up a bag of basmati rice with a doubtful expression, a measuring jug and a bowl of rice waiting by the hob

Technique

How to Cook Basmati Rice on the Stove

Two methods, and Indian kitchens use both. Absorption for flavour and pulao, the drain method for the most separate grains you will ever get. Ratios, timings, why you rinse until cloudy and not clear, and the resting step almost everyone skips.

Portions of cooked onion-tomato masala base cooling in containers beside bowls of cooked lentils and chopped aromatics

Technique

Indian Meal Prep: The One Hour That Saves Six Dinners

Nearly all the work in an Indian meal lives in one place — the onion-tomato base. Make it once, freeze it in portions, and a weeknight curry becomes fifteen minutes. What else is worth batching, what never is, and the one rule about leftover rice.

Ingredients

What to buy, what to make yourself, and what the label is not telling you.

Two people at a kitchen table comparing a bowl of dry ground spice blend with a bowl of wet ground masala paste, whole cinnamon and dried chillies beside them

Ingredients

What Is Masala? The Words Indian Recipes Assume You Know

Masala just means a mixture of spices — not a dish, not a sauce, not one thing. What garam, chaat and chai masala each are, why garam masala contains no chilli, and plain definitions for tadka, bhuna and dum.

Butter melting and foaming in a steel pan on a gas hob, next to a muslin-lined strainer set over a bowl and an empty jar waiting to be filled

Ingredients

How to Make Ghee at Home — and What 'Desi Ghee' Really Means

One ingredient, one pan, about half an hour. The three stages to listen for, why unsalted butter matters, and a straight explanation of desi, bilona and A2 ghee — including which of those premiums survives the making of ghee and which does not.

An engraved steel masala dabba open on a wooden table, its katoris holding chilli powder, turmeric, cumin, mustard and coriander, with the lid resting alongside

Ingredients

The Masala Dabba: What Goes In It, and Where to Keep It

What an Indian spice box actually holds, why the seven vary by household, and the one thing almost everyone gets wrong about where to put it — kept by the stove, spices die faster.

A spoonful of golden ghee lifted from an open jar on a dining table, surrounded by thali plates of dal, rice, roti and gulab jamun

Ingredients

What Is Ghee? And Why Indian Cooking Uses It Instead of Butter

Ghee is butter with the water and milk solids taken out — and, unlike clarified butter, with those solids browned first. What that changes about smoke point, shelf life and taste, plus an honest look at the health claims.

Appliances

Modern kitchen machines, judged on whether they earn their counter space in an Indian kitchen.

A Rotimatic robot, an electric roti press and a hinged cast-iron press lined up on a kitchen counter beside a wooden board and rolling pin

Appliances

Automatic Roti Makers: Press, Robot, or Neither

Two machines share one name and the prices are twenty times apart — a $30 press that only flattens dough you already made, and a $1,500-plus robot that takes flour and water and hands you a finished roti. Which is which, whether either copes with real atta, and who should not buy one at all.

An older couple laughing beside a steaming electric rice cooker, a bag of basmati rice open on the worktop next to it

Appliances

Basmati Rice in a Rice Cooker: The Ratio Nobody Tells You

Rice cookers were built around Japanese short-grain rice, and basmati is the opposite grain. Which cup the water lines actually refer to, the ratio that works soaked and unsoaked, and why rinsing until the water runs clear is a mistake.

Four people gathered around an air fryer on a kitchen island, marinated pieces browning inside it, with spice jars and chopped vegetables on the counter

Appliances

Indian Food in the Air Fryer: What It's Actually For

An air fryer is a bad deep fryer and a surprisingly good tandoor. Why tandoori chicken and paneer tikka work brilliantly, exactly how close an air-fried samosa gets to the real thing, and the two-minute trick that puts the smoke back.

An electric pressure cooker on a kitchen counter beside bowls of whole spices, lentils and chopped onion, mid-way through building a curry base

Appliances

The Instant Pot for Indian Cooking: What Changes, and What Doesn't

An Instant Pot runs at lower pressure than the stovetop cooker Indian recipes were written for, so whistles don't convert and times don't transfer. Real timings for dal, rajma and rice, why curry triggers the BURN message, and the two things it will never do well.

Culture

Where the food comes from, and why it is cooked the way it is.

Four people at an Indian restaurant buffet counter, talking as they choose from a long row of steel dishes of different curries

Culture

Is Indian Food Healthy? The Honest Answer

Home Indian food and restaurant Indian food give almost opposite answers to the same question. What an everyday Indian plate actually contains, why the takeaway version is different, and what spices genuinely do — and don't — contribute.

The Alchemist of Our Kitchen: A Tribute to Ma's Cooking

Culture

The Alchemist of Our Kitchen: A Tribute to Ma's Cooking

The story behind this project — a gastronomical tribute to a mother's intuitive genius with spices, and to the heirloom recipes reimagined here for the modern kitchen.