Common Indian Cooking Styles

Welcome to the food paradise! India is a land of varied tastes and flavours with the flavours that vary with different cultures and regions. Many might not know this but the country has some 35% of the people that are strictly vegetarians and there are roughly 30% that are regular meat eaters, states the top North Indian restaurant in Delhi.

It might be interesting to note that the tastes and preferences vary highly with the changing geographies along with the climatic conditions. With such an immersive variety that the Indian food offers, it in fact is imperative to have a look at the common cooking styles that Indians have:

-Roasting Dry Spices

Spices such as garam masala, ground cumin, coriander seeds and other curry spices are roasted dry in a frying pan. This is one of the common practices when preparing north Indian cuisine in Delhi or any household. Once the frying pan or the iron girdle is preheated on a medium flame, the spices are added and are continuously stirred until the spices turn a few shades darker.

-Adding Seasoning to the Dals (cereals)

Commonly known as tarka, some oil (ghee) is added to a pan followed by masalas like mustard seeds, cumin, chopped onion and garlic, chillies and heeng (asafoetida). Then these are cooked and stirred for some one minute until the mustard seeds start popping.

-Grinding Masalas

It is one of the ways we store our spices. We use a coffee grinder or a specific spice grinder to powder spices like garam masala, turmeric and red chillies amongst others, explains a top North Indian restaurant Dhaba By Claridges. 

-Cooking in Tandoors

Exclusive and unique to Indian cooking is tandoori cooking style. Now that meat, seafood and chicken is cooked in Tandoors, tandoor cooking has become a significant style of cooking.

Instant and Healthy Lunch Ideas

Lunch, nutritionists say is a very essential part of your daily diet routine and keeps you energy-packed till dinner. Several reports point towards the fact that skipping lunch is especially a bad idea when you are trying too hard to ensure nutrition and right amount of calories in your diet.

Lunches are made to make your taste buds dance, remarks quirkily the best restaurants in Delhi for lunch. Many believe that you get to have delicacies only at the cost of unwanted calories. However that’s really not true!

Helping you with some of the finest and super-delicious lunches, here are some healthy lunch ideas:

Chicken Salad Pita
Imagine a wheat pita stuffed with chopped chicken breast, made more nutritious with grated apple and greek yoghurt. Coming with an exact calorie count of 344, the greek yoghurt makes the recipe both delicious and high in nutrition. Rich in Calcium and Vitamin, the recipe is surely is a must have on any given day, says the best restaurant for food delivery in Saket.

Green Club Sandwich
As green as the plate sounds, it has all the goodness of green vegetables. You can prepare it using rye toast or wholegrain. Abundant in fibre, the dish is a nice change from the usual vegetarian salad while restoring all the nutritional value. Avocado, rocket leaves, cherry tomatoes along with ready-made humus goes into preparing this quick and healthy recipe.

Red Lentil and Sweet Potato Pate
Comes with a calorie count of as low as 200, it is a splash of refreshment and energy in between the day, says a chef from the best restaurant in Delhi for lunch. Prepared with ingredients like smoked paprika, olive oil, diced sweet potatoes, sodium vegetable stock and red wine vinegar along with pita bread, it is a high in proteins and low in fat recipe. Fit to satisfy all time hunger pangs, it is also beneficial for treating diabetes and obesity.

Adopting healthy cooking habits for Indian fare

Between doing laundry and mopping floors, what runs through our minds are the details of countless recipes, which are fondly associated with memories. Most homemakers and anyone who fancy cooking traditional Indian fare would know the feeling. The flaky crusts of a perfectly done cookie, the rich creamy consistency of a sauce or the thickness of the curry deserve all the contemplation and meditation and I give them that in between my daily chores. Ingredient by ingredient, every step of the recipe needs reflection and innovation. And the end result can always use up an extra pinch of sugar or a second dollop of ghee to add to the delight. 

However, the health conscious would definitely frown at my food filled with love, and fat! Well as I struggled to appease our family doctor and dietician with what was served on the table every day, I struggled with the taste—something I have never had a problem with. Even a bad food day in my kitchen could match up to the best north Indian restaurants in Gurgaon but adopting healthy cooking habits was detrimental for my kitchen, until I came across a friend, a food blogger, who passed on these tips. 

When you take out the clarified butter and heavy spices from the food, the focus is suddenly shifted to the underlying rich and subtler flavours that are available in abundance to play around with. Indian fare is a medley of veggies, dairy products, legumes and other grains and each lend a distinct flavour to the food, beside the onion garlic paste and spices. So the tip number one would be to start focusing on the taste of each and every ingredient individually, says a chef at a home delivery restaurants in Saket. 

Moreover, she is also a big advocator of a full course meal everyday rather than just the main course. It gives me space to sneak in a few nutritious bites in the face of homemade soups, baked veggies, sprout salads and grilled kebabs. It is also very satiating so the main meal that is laden with carbs only constitutes of a very little portion.

Round off your meal with Mukhwaas!

The North Indian cuisine is known for its elaborate multi course meals. The fare, fit for the royalty, includes various shades of flavours and aromas that will have your senses enamoured. Before the common folk admired and adapted the royal salver into their humble daily lives, there were elaborate courses befitting, seasons, moods, main course’s preparation method, time of the meal and even the digestive system.

One such small ritual in this imperial meal was Mukwaas-- a spoonful of sweet and aromatic flavours which disentangle your senses from the rich and spice laden flavours, refreshes the mouth and sets the digestive juices roiling. This unique course in the meal is now usually limited to just fennel seeds, but did you know there were over 100 recipes for that, says a chef at a popular restaurant in Saket. Here are a few samples.

All-in-one

Take 1 portion of roughly shredded betel nut leaves to this add ¼ portion of dhana dal, roasted fennel seeds, sugar coated fennel seed, dry dates finely chopped, sweet supari and rose sherbet each. Now take 1 portion of fresh shredded coconut half of which can be coloured with permitted food colours and add it to the mixture. Finally, put in around 2 teaspoons of ground cardamom. Mix all this together and store in an airtight container. North Indian restaurants saket say that it has a shelf life as long as one year if handled properly.

All purpose Mukhwaas

 Betel nut and supari aren’t everyone’s favourite. Besides, children should avoid such ingredients. So this recipe uses healthy ayirvedic medicines which are good for digestion, cures seasonal coughs and tatse good. take 1 portion of fennel seeds, carom seeds, mulethi powder and dried mint leaves. To this add sea salt according to your taste and 1 tsp of cloves. Now take the whole mixture and coarse grind it in a mixer.

Best north Indian restaurants in Delhi

Fusions foods, Mediterranean diets, Italian delights and French delicacies: a panoply of platters are at offer and yet I’ll choose my butter chicken over everything else, any day. So if you too are a ‘Delhite’ who dotes on the traditional Punjabi food, then this is dedicated to you.

Chandni Chowk ke golgappe, University road’s tea and samosa, Moolchand’s Paratha joint- when your whole life in the city has been not an album of memories but a food association game, I take it upon me to suggest you some really cool eating joints serving Check Taste of North Indian food Delhi that are too good to miss.

 

 Dhaba By Claridges

The fine dine restaurant with a quirky décor by the Claridges hotels is now a standalone unit. Economic prices and some superb food makes it one of the finest North Indian restaurants in Delhi. Balti meat, mutton chaap, kanastari baingan and chicken pulao are all their glowing dishes. But wait till you have tried their theka menu for some innovative cocktails with quirky names. The ambiance is that of a typical dhaba that is sophisticated yet earthy in its own ways. It can score a mighty 8 for food even on a bad food day, as a bad food day at dhaba is certainy better than good food days at many joints that are stupidly famous. A full 10 for ambiance and serice.

Dum Pukht

A little on the costlier side of it, but the experience is every penny worth it. If you are ready to splurge around 6 grand on a dinner for two then Dum Pukht knows how to pull it off. A pricey meal with assured elegance and earthy flavours. Though it is known for its traditional Mughlai cuisine, a selection of Punjabi recipes gathers much praise. Try the tadka daal and tawa chicken and you will remember the flavours for a long long time.

Bukhara

Living in Delhi, who hasn’t heard of Bukhara? Tagged to be ‘The Best’ it has maintained its standards ever since. Try the epicurean dal tadka and family naan and you would know how they have earned the name they got. The price though can be a let-down for many. Be ready to splurge around 5k on a dinner for two. 

3 Best Restaurants in Delhi Serving the Most Authentic Cuisine

It is indeed surprising that the most appealing and prestigious restaurants in New Delhi do not, in fact, serve Indian food while Japanese, Italian, French and Chinese restaurants dominate the list of best restaurants in Delhi. That is not to say that food native to India is dead though. Worldwide Indian favorites such as Tandoori Chicken have their history intact in the kitchens of New Delhi, and are still recreated with astounding innovation and experimentation with different herbs and spices native to India. Dhaba by Claridges is one of the best restaurants in Delhi that tries to tweak traditional classics by modern culinary methods.

We bring you the best restaurants for local food and other Indian cuisines in New Delhi:

 

 1.    Dum Pukht

Dum Pukht specializes in Awadhi cuisine native to Lucknow. Meats, herbs and spices are placed in a pot sealed with dough after which the contents of the pot are slow-cooked over a low flame for hours. The meat cooks in its own nutritive juices, soaking the flavors of the seasoning.  The resulting soft and savory non-vegetarian delight is offered as a specialty at the restaurant that named itself after the divine dish.

2.    Dhaba by Claridges

Specializing in North Indian cuisine, the opulent restaurant is themed after a quintessential road-trip through Northern India. Dhaba by Claridges tries to recreate an ideal dhaba experience for its customers who like to indulge in North Indian food on roadside eateries. It offers a number of rustic dishes including Kanastari Baingan, Dhaba Chilli Chicken, Balti Meat and Amritsari Tawa Chaap. Its rather odd ambience is what drives tourists and locals to experience their traditional food native to North India.

3.    Karim's

The restaurant serves up authentic Mughlai cuisine that would take you back to the imperial kitchens of the ancient Mughal Empire. Karim’s is a quite a popular eatery in New Delhi that has recently spread out to new locations. The restaurant’s century- old original store in Old Delhi nonetheless remains to be the ultimate destination for domestic food explorers and tourists alike. Famous local dishes offered by Karim’s feature Mutton Burra Kebabs and the much fabled Tandoori Chicken.

Ugly veggies for delight!

That a restaurant menu is laden with all the delicacies which a human would like to feast upon is no hidden thing. But that the same menu houses some crappy (read: revolting) a dish too surely is. And that is probably because no one ever brings themselves to order those. Why? Because they are a tad too, well, boring. And hideous to taste buds. 

Here are some dishes that north Indian restaurant in Delhi that sound hideous or maybe even look hideous. But just a mouthful of it will leave you revelling in its delectable flavour. 

• Eggplant: The name in itself is weird enough to compel people to think how awkward the taste will be. True, it is unsightly (for the use of a better word!), but dig into it and you will know that its taste is not. An eggplant has savoury vegetables filled inside; it’s only when you will split it open that you will know how magical the taste is. It is marinated for some time before being put on coal stove in an iron utensil. 

• Pumpkin: Evokes a deadly, ugly image, right? This sweet and sour, tangy veggie will surely leave you up for more helpings. Only the name sounds retarded; if cooked correctly it is good enough for you to demand more of it. Always some more!

•  Zucchini: Evokes childhood memories when moms would fill in the tiffin boxes with the unpleasant vegetable and would snub when the tiffin would come back untouched and uneaten. Just a mouthful of it at Dhaba by Claridges Saket will revamp those memories forever. Yes, taste the veggie at DBC, replete with garam masala and it will be the show-stopper amidst all the dishes on the table. You will be surprised to find yourself licking your fingers over Zuchini. Yes, sure you will!