Spices

Indian cooking relies on spices in a way unlike any other world cuisine, and staring down a typically long ingredient list can be intimidating if you are just starting to learn to cook Indian. However, once you have the basic spices, the recipes become infinitely more manageable. Whole spices, and many preground spices, will keep for ages in airtight containers in a dark cupboard (claims that they’ll lose all potency after a mere twelve months to the contrary). A convenient way to store your most-used spices is in a masala dhabba, a round stainless-steel container with seven smaller compartments for different spices. The best models will have two lids, one of them very tight-fitting to keep the spices from mingling. When you begin to cook, simply pull the whole container from the cupboard and spoon out the spices you need. To start, I’d recommend filling a masala dhabba with ground cumin, ground coriander, turmeric, whole mustard seeds, whole cumin seeds, whole green cardamom, and ground garam masala.