10 Years of Indian Cooking in 20 Minutes

All right. So, if you've come to this video thinking you're going to get a tikka masala or butter chicken recipe, you certainly have come to the wrong place. I've spent over a decade studying and cooking Indian food. And what I've learned is that it's a cuisine built on transforming simple and affordable ingredients into some of the most delicious and comforting food on the planet using unique and repeatable techniques. Which is why I personally believe that every home cook should have a baseline knowledge of how to cook the cuisine. So, in this video, I'm taking everything I've learned and breaking it down into a simple guide that anyone can grasp. Whether you've never toasted a spice in your life or you already have your favorite Indian recipe, welcome to my beginner's guide to Indian cuisine. Now, you might be asking yourself, what's a white dude doing teaching me Indian food? Which is a totally valid question. And my main answer to that is that I've put out dozens of videos on Indian cuisine over the years, which have gained over 20 million views, and the reviews are in. But like everything on this channel, I'm not chasing strict textbook authenticity. I'm focused on making Indian food as accessible as possible to home cooks. So, of course, everything you see today is inspired by classic techniques and ingredients, but applied to things that can easily be found in a Western market. And don't get me wrong, one of my favorite things to do is to shop at a specialty Indian grocery store. I'm like a kid in a candy shop. But things like fresh curry leaves and pickled mango are ingredients that are not going to be accessible to most people watching this video. And I've made sure to build this guide so that the effort you put in pays off across a wide range of dishes. So, a lot of the prep overlaps, the ingredients cross over, and once you learn the basic techniques, you'll not only be able to cook one dish, you'll be able to build an entire Indian feast. And the first thing I have to do is a little bit of shopping. And by shopping, I mean a quick trip around the studio. And what's very exciting is we grew ginger successfully for the first time. Now, this is fresh ginger, which of course is going to have more moisture than the classic ginger you get from the supermarket, which is cured and slightly more dried out, but either one will totally work. And I also grew some turmeric, which is a staple ingredient in a ton of Indian dishes, which will make it into a few dishes today, but you can totally swap this out for the dried powder stuff. And I also grabbed some aromatics from the basement. I'll definitely need a bunch of garlic and onions, which shows up in almost every single dish. And one element I love about Indian food is the use of fresh tomatoes, which makes for great options when the tomatoes are flowing in the summer and fall. And I'm still getting fresh tomatoes for my greenhouse, which I'm going to use, but I also grab some canned tomatoes as backup, which can easily replace the fresh stuff, depending on if you can get fresh tomatoes at the time of year you're cooking. Now, we first have to prep two items that make up the base of probably 90% of all Indian dishes. are absolutely essential to authentic tasting Indian food. And the first one is a ginger garlic paste. Now in India, they make these specialty high-powered food processors that are amazing at grinding up a powder or making a small paste. And they're very difficult to find in the US, but I do have a really cheap and simple hack, which is this $20 spice grinder. It's not as powerful, but it gets the job done. And it comes with two different tops. one for grinding up dried spices and the other one for processing fresh ingredients which I'll be using for this ginger garlic paste. And I cleaned up all of that ginger and I'll just break it up into smaller pieces right into the container. And I'm peeling an equal amount of garlic which I'll add on top of the ginger. And I'll start processing. And what this thing lacks in power. It sort of makes up with in shakeability which really helps get everything nice and smooth. Not perfectly smooth but this will definitely get the job done. And having this ginger garlic paste just makes adding your aromatic freshness extremely easy and very effective. Now there is no cuisine in the world that uses more dried spice than Indian food. And this comes from a location in a climate that has produced some of the highest quality spices in the world for thousands of years. So you have a culture that has relied on them to enhance the flavor of their food, but also they're used as medicine. They're used as food safety. So if there's one thing you take away from this video, it's how dried spices are used. because they are used in a lot of different forms. Sometimes they're whole, sometimes they're in powder form, and they're applied at different timings of the cooking process to really create a dynamic layer of flavor. And India, of course, is a very large country, so depending on the region you're in, you're going to see different spices available and different spice blends. Today, I'm making the most popular spice blend of all time, which is the garam masala, which translates to hot spice mix. And I'm going to be using some of the most classic and popular spices available. And the key for a great spice mix is to first toast your spices to really wake them up and bring out those flavors. So, I'll get a pan on a medium heat and I'll first go in with a good bit of fennel, which will add a nice sweetness. I'll add a similar amount of coriander, which has a nice earthy floral flavor, and a similar amount of cumin, which has a really earthy and smoky flavor. Then I'll go in with just a few cloves since they're super potent. Think like a really intense chai tea. Then some black pepperc corns, which will add a nice bite and spiciness. I'll add a few full cardaman pods, which are also very potent, but they're extremely floral. And finally, I'll break up one whole cinnamon stick, which will add a really nice sweetness. Now, technically, these spices toast at different timings cuz they're different sizes. But to make things easier, I find if you just get the heat low enough, toast them nice and low and slow, it's just so much easier to do them all at once. And really, you'll know when they're done. One, it's going to smell incredible, which it already is smelling so good. You'll actually start to see some slight browning of the spices, specifically that cumin brown pretty aggressively. So, just keep it on a low heat. Wait for the browning. Wait for the good smells and we can grind everything up. [Music] All right. So, now that the prep is done, we're starting with our first dish, which is a dal. The most humble of all Indian dishes. Just a flavor lentil or legume. So, first I'm going to soak my legumes. In this case, I have mung doll, which is a split mung bean, which is fairly popular in many doll recipes, but this can definitely be trickier to find. What's much easier to find, of course, are any type of lentil. I have some red lentils here. So, I'm going to use a mix of both for this doll. And first, we're going to soak the legumes so they cook faster. And I've got a fun trick, which is actually to soak double the amount that you need. And you'll see why very shortly. Now, I'm going to prep my veggies. And all three dishes that I'm going to make use the exact same base aromatics. So, what's great is I can prep all of my veggies together and just use them as I need for each dish. First, I have some sweet onions that came from a massive onion harvest this season. I'll slice those in half, peel off the outer skin, and just cut them up to about a medium dice. [Music] Next, I have to prep my fresh tomatoes. These are all from my garden which I just pick and let them ripen on the counter. So, what I'll do is I'll just go through and pick the ripest ones and let the others just continue to ripen. And I first we'll slice them in half. I'll take out the core and I'll just dice them up as well to a similar size as the onion. All right. So, now that all of our veggies are prepped, I'll get a pot on a nice medium heat and I'm using ghee as my fat of choice for every dish today, which is one of the most popular cooking fats in India. And ghee is a clarified butter which gives you the ability to cook at a much higher smoke point while still getting nice buttery flavors. And if you can't find it, you can make it yourself or you can just use another high smoke point oil or fat. And I'm first going to sprinkle in some cumin seeds to the ghee, which is called tempering. Basically, what's happening is the spices are toasting in that fat, adding our first layer of flavor that's going to carry through the entire dish. And after about a minute, when you can see some slight coloration change and you can smell those spices toasting, I'll dump in my onions. And I'm not trying to get a ton of color on these. I'm just cooking them down to soften them up and caramelize them a bit to bring out those sugar. Then in goes a big scoop of my ginger garlic paste, which I'll caramelize and toast up with the other aromatics for about 3 to 4 minutes. And when that's smelling great, in goes my tomatoes. And I couldn't find any of the classic Indian green chilies, but I did have a spicy red chili that I'm just going to slice up and add in for some extra heat. So, the key to good Indian food is really focusing on building the layers of flavor. I mean, that's the key to a lot of good food. But great example here. You don't just start dumping things in and moving to the next step. Everything I added, I've gave it attention and love, including these tomatoes. I think it's so important to cook them down, get them nice and jammy. They almost make like a really flavorful aromatic tomato sauce. And once you have that, we can move on to adding our mongdal. So it's fully soaked. You can see here completely hydrated, which means it's going to cook so much faster. So here's what I'm going to do. Take a ladle, strain off about half of these. Doesn't need to be perfect. That looks like a good amount of dah. I'll just let that cook together. Now, here is my favorite hack. The reason I soak more, I'm going to pour that right into this blender. Boom. Boom. I'm going to take this right over to the blender. This is so cool. And we're going to blend this up. Nice and smooth. Just like that. Grab a container. And I will pour that right into there. Season it with salt. Few pinches. Give that a mix. And what do we have right here? That is our dosa batter. As simple as that. And I'll just pop this aside. Put a lid on it. And I'll let it ferment for the next few days. giving it a stir every single day and we'll make some doses a little bit later. All right, now back to our doll. We're just going to add some more water. And this is our final layer of seasoning, our homemade garam masala that's going in. Good palm full of that. I'll go in with a little bit of paprika. This is nice for coloring, but also a nice pepper flavor. And then just a little bit of that turmeric. You can use the dried powder, of course. Boom. Tiny bit more salt. Give that a nice mix. And we'll cap this. And the key is really letting this cook for 30 to 45 minutes until the lentils and the doll in here really start breaking down and getting much more smooth. So, this been cooking for about 45 minutes on a medium low heat. And look how broken down and smooth it's becoming. Turn it down. You can cook dal to really whatever texture you want. Sometimes you see it with more texture. Sometimes you see it very smooth. But I do find like Oh my god. One, I think it's more digestible when you cook those lentils down a lot. Needs a little salt. That is so good. Perfect spice level. Oh my god, you can't beat that. It's like Indian mashed potatoes with just so much more flavor. And what's so great about dah is it kind of works with everything. You could serve it simply over some rice, some fresh herbs. Sometimes you'll see it served with some flavored ghee poured over top. This is also a good amount of dahl. I don't need all of this at once, so I will actually freeze it in ice cubes and then I can just easily reheat it as a little side dish. But today, I'm going to bring everything I'm cooking together into one magnificent Indian feast at the end of the video. All right, so I just want to take a quick minute to tell you about today's sponsor, which is Our Place, my absolute favorite non-toxic, high-performance cookware brand. And I just put out a video on creating a less toxic and less wasteful kitchen. And the response was great. So, it's super cool to see that so many of you are into this stuff. And that's why I love Our Place as a brand because not only do they have a dedication to creating non-toxic cookware, but all of their products also perform extremely well. And I'm looking for both of those things. And I've already told you about their titanium line, which has a titanium pattern pressed into the pan, creating a naturally non-stick coating. I'm obsessed with all of these pots and pans. They are extremely allpurpose and a go-to in my kitchen. But I'm also a big fan of their enamelcoated cast iron pans as well. You get all of the great performance of a cast iron pan, but the enamel coating makes maintenance an absolute breeze. And our place is currently having their biggest sale of the year, so it is the absolute best time to shop right now. So, click the link below to shop Hour Place's lowest prices. And if you're shopping after the sale ends, use Mike 10 for 10% off. All right, so we're moving on to one of my favorite curries in the world, which is a lamb curry that will 100% blow people's minds, especially if they've never had Indian food. And what you're looking for is a tougher cut of lamb. You could use a lamb shank. I found myself a nice lamb shoulder, which I did have to break down myself a little bit. I first took off the lamb chops to save them for later. And this had the bone in. So, I just cut around the bone. And I chopped up some smaller chunks of the shoulder meat, which will stew down and break into nice little bite-sized pieces. And you see a lot of lamb curry recipes that do a good bit of initial seasoning of the lamb. For me, I'm going to keep it really simple with just salt and pepper and let the actual gravy make up most of the flavor. And just like the doll, we're going to start by tempering some spices and ghee. But this time, we've got a few more spices we're going to add. Here I've got some fresh bay leaf, cardaman pods, cloves, cumin seeds, and a cinnamon stick. And I'll toast those up in the ghee until the kitchen starts smelling amazing. Then I'll dump in my onions to caramelize for a few minutes. Then in goes the ginger garlic paste to cook for a few minutes. And before the tomatoes go in, since they're super watery, I'm first going to dump in my seasoned lamb. And I'll cook everything on a nice even medium heat for about 10 to 15 minutes until that lamb starts to actually render out some of its fat, which is going to help fry all of those aromatics up together and start to brown the meat. So, I absolutely love this technique. It's almost the opposite of your classic braze where you would sear the meat first, remove it, then add your aromatics and spices. We first developed all that flavor. We're adding the lamb. And you can see here, with enough patience, you start rendering the fat out of the lamb shoulder. Now, all of those flavors are frying together. And and this little gravy that's forming. Let's give that a taste. I can't even explain the smells and flavors going on right now with this dish. There's nothing like cooking real Indian food at home. So, what I'm going to do now is add my tomatoes in since they're watery and that's going to pretty much cut down the frying process. And we'll continue to build out this gravy. I'm also going to pop open this jar of our own canned tomatoes. Just add a little bit extra sauce. You can use either fresh tomatoes, canned tomatoes, or both like myself. That's a better level of tomato action. Now, after the tomatoes start to stew down, I'm going to add in a nice palm full of garam masala and hit it with some salt. And I'll also add in some additional water since this curry has to cook down for a little bit longer to break down those tougher lamb shoulder pieces. Some of that liquid, of course, is going to reduce over time. So, this has been cooking for about an hour and a half. Every cut of meat is going to cook slightly different, but just wait till you see the heavenly heavenly goodness inside of this croc. Look at that. Oh my god. You can see the ghee and the fat from the lamb has separated a little bit, but everything really melts together. and creates this beautiful gravy. But what we're really after is if you find a chunk of meat, it's just falling apart. That's crazy. Complete disintegration. So buttery, so tender, no resistance. You can see there's a whole cinnamon stick in there. You can remove that if you want. I like just keeping it in there. And you can serve this simply over rice, with some fresh herbs. Keep it simple as the star of the show. Or we're going to bring it together, of course, with everything I'm cooking in this video. All right. Now, the final dish we're making today is Sagg, which I think everyone should understand how to make because it is the most creative and best tasting way to eat a ton of greens. Now, a lot of recipes use spinach for this dish, which is nice and neutral. It's a good American pallet pleaser. But I've used this same sogg base to cook every type of green, really whatever's growing in my garden at the time. It could be kale, Swiss chard, mustard greens are a great option and fairly traditional in India. And if you're buying the greens, I would recommend using frozen greens because it's just a much better value than cooking down fresh greens. But it just so happened that I did have a bunch of fresh spinach. So, I'm first going to blanch all of the spinach for just about a minute and then it goes right into an ice bath. And I've used different techniques for curries that just dump in all the greens and really stew them down for a long time, which gives you a little bit more of a heartier texture. But if you want a nice smooth sad, the best way to accomplish that is to actually blend up all of your blanch greens. So, I'll first make a little green smoothie. Now, since this dish is just smooth greens, I like bulking it up and adding some texture with some additional ingredients. You'll see, of course, paneer cheese for asag paneer being one of the more classic versions. I personally love adding cooked chickpeas, but I only had a few left, so I'm adding some white beans as well. Not traditional, just what I had on hand. And I've just propped these in the pressure cooker, which takes about 15 to 17 minutes from dry to cook them completely through. Then to make the so I'll get a pot on a medium heat. I'll add in some ghee, followed by both whole coriander and cumin seeds, which I'll temper in that hot ghee for about 30 seconds. Then I'll dump in some mustard seeds. And what's great about mustard seeds is they'll tell you when you're ready to move on. Once they start popping like popcorn in the fat, I'll go right in with my onions to brown for a few minutes, followed by that ginger garlic paste, which I'll cook for another 2 to 3 minutes, then in with my tomatoes. The same basic techniques for the base here as the other two dishes, just some slight variations in the spices. Now, once the tomatoes are nice and jammy, you could go right in with your spinach. I'm actually going to add about half a can of whole coconut milk, which isn't traditional inside, but you do see a lot of coconut milk in southern Indian food. And I really just like the creaminess and flavor it adds to this dish. So I'll cook that down for about 5 to 7 minutes until it reduces by about a/3. Then I'll go in with that blended spinach. Stir that up. Add in a palm full of garam masala and a little bit of salt to season. All right. So right now you can see the sag has a super vibrant bright green color. We give it a taste. The aromatic flavors are there, but it really needs to stew to bring everything together. And what's going to happen is the color over time as the spinach cooks is going to get a little bit darker and those flavors are going to start getting a little deeper. So what I'll do since it's a little thin, I'm just going to cook it uncovered for about 20 minutes, which is the perfect timing for these ah hot chickpeas and beans to be finished cooking. All right, there you go. It's reduced by about a third. And just look at the color. Complete transformation. A nice dark forest green. Now give it a taste for seasoning. M m. Oh, so much better as it cooks. Everything melts together. I can taste some of the crunchy spice in there from the coriander, which I like. Little textural element. Spot on, though. I would say needs just the tiniest bit of salt. And then my beans are done. I'm just straining off some of these beans and chickpeas. Tossing them right in there, which is really just bulking it up, making it slightly more hearty. I also love adding vegetables in here as well. Roasted cauliflower, roasted squash. There's so many great options out there. And just like the dahl, this freezes and defrosts extremely well or it's amazing over rice. But again, we are getting closer to this final meal. So, I actually forgot to add some chili to that so recipe, which is a perfect transition into an essential part of Indian food, which are chutneys. Basically, side condiments, flavor enhancers to your final dish. And there are thousands of different chutney recipes, any flavor you can imagine. I'm just going to be covering one in this video, which is one of the most popular ones, a cilantro mint chutney. So, to a blender, I'm going to add fresh cilantro, fresh mint, a piece of ginger. I'll add some chili, and of course, you can control the spice level. I didn't have any peanuts on hand, so I'm just using some cashews, some cumin seeds, some freshsqueezed lime, salt to season, and then I'll add some ice cubes in to keep the color of the herbs nice and bright. I'll give it a blend, and then I'll taste for seasoning. This needed a little bit more salt, and I did add some sugar to balance out the flavors. And now I have an additional condiment that can add some spiciness, a nice acidic punch, and most importantly, just some nice freshness that can go along with a bunch of cooked dishes. And finally, before everything comes together, let's revisit those soaked legumes. We're going to be making a form of a dosa. And traditional dosa is made with soaked rice and lentils. And the popular variety is cooked super thin, but to really nail it down, you need a big flat top. They're very difficult to make at home, but this non-traditional version I like to make gives you similar flavors. It's just so much easier to make. So, what I do is crack in two eggs to the blended mixture. I'll add a little bit of flour to help bind everything up. Then, I'll add some ghee to a non-stick pan. I'll dump in the batter. Swirl it around a little bit to coat the entire bottom of the pan. Then, when it's nice and crispy on the bottom, I'll give it a flip over. And then I have a pancake that has the same incredible flavor as a dose. It can still soak up all of that goodness. It's just much easier to make. Now, the way I would finish this personally, I always like some pickled item when I'm eating Indian food like this. So, a nice just lump of sauerkraut is what I have. And then I've got this chutney. Spice it up. I can just use that as needed. And we've got a feast. Oh, that chutney is good. And every single one of these curries, of course, is good on its own, but there's nothing like getting Indian food in a deluxe experience like this. >> Wow. These pancakes are amazing. But this freaking lamb curry hits on another level. I'm a bit speechless. It just all works so well together. And the chutney adds such a nice brightness and spice. Now, what's been the most helpful for me with Indian food is understanding the techniques, understanding the flavors. So, I have the ability to take the essence of this cuisine and incorporate it into my daily meal prep with the ingredients that I have growing, the ingredients I have available. And to me, Indian food has been an absolute joy to cook over the years.

Click the link below to shop Our Place's lowest prices, and if you're shopping after the sale ends, use MIKE10 for 10% off - https://bit.ly/4pmQKFF 00:00 - Intro 01:39 - Ingredients 02:33 - Ginger Garlic Paste 03:39 - Dried Spices & Garam Masala 05:45 - Dal 11:54 - Lamb Curry 15:13 - Saag 18:51 - Cilantro Mint Chutney 19:47 - Dosa 20:31 - Indian Feast Learn to cook with confidence using my courses, cookbooks, and free recipes at https://lifebymikeg.com For other products used in this video - https://www.amazon.com/shop/lifebymikeg Music Credits: Epidemic Sound: https://www.epidemicsound.com Video Credits Creator, Host - Mike G Editor - Cooper Makohon Motion Graphics - Raphael Oliveira Culinary Producer - Carly C