indian cooking technicalities

aether

Whenever I'm cooking with whole spices (cardamom pods, cinammon sticks and cloves), I end up biting into the whole spice later at some point in the meal...something I find quite distasteful. I was under the understanding that the spices should not be crushed before frying in the oil, but this inevitably means I'll be eating them, whole, later. Am I doing something wrong? I don't recall ever eating whole spices at restaurants. Would it hurt to just use my mortar and pestle on at least the cardamom pods and cloves before frying?

wonderwomanusa

I've had many meals from a local restaurant where the cardamom has been left in the stew for me to bite on. Yech!

You might try tying the spices loosely in a cheesecloth bag -- you can still fry them, and can find the bag and pull it out much more easily.

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radz

cardamom pods, cinammon sticks you can make powder and use too.

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SitaParityaga

eat with your hands....then you can feel them first, before you bite into them. Go ahead. You're at home...its fun!

Tomi

Aether, I think this is a superstition. Go ahead and grind away. Most spices you don't want to "fry" for very long in oil anyway; if you crush them and you must fry them, then it's an even shorter, almost instantaneous process. Say they tell you to fry whole cloves for a minute, then just fry ground cloves for 5 or 10 seconds. And use a smaller amount than if you used whole.

Often spices are just added to a liquid medium instead of frying them, like after you have sauteed onions. And if the spices have to be roasted first, you can do that in a dry cast iron skillet, no oil.

Instead of a mortar and pestle I recommend buying a small (Braun, etc.) coffee grinder, and a brush to get the powder out. It works great for cinnamon sticks, cloves, cardamom (with or without the shell), even very hard spices like caraway seeds. Use this grinder only for spices: no coffee would be drinkable after you've ground cloves or cardamom in the same grinder, unless you go for tacky flavored coffees.

aether

Thanks everybody! I think sometimes I get overly hung up on the whole "authenticity" of process thing...