Topic: Garam masala recipe

[madpower]

A friend gave me his garam masala recipe,i have got to say it is far better than anything i have ever produced,it gave tonights curry a beautiful flavor,i used it when i put my other spices in the curry then again at the end like i was told too,it has an ingredient in i had never heard of called triphala powder,it definitely does something for it and i was told the masala is nothing special without it,i borrowed a tsp full of him to make mine and i have  ordered some of ebay,

1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp brown mustard seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp nigella seeds
1 tsp triphala powder
put the above in a spice grinder without roasting,grind until smooth

in a saucepan roast 1 tsp of coriander seeds and 1 tsp curry leaves,roast gently for 2 minuets,leave to cool in bowl  then add to the spices in the grinder with the above spices and grind again

roast the following for a couple of minutes
1 inch piece of cinnamon stick
10 pepper corns
2 cloves
3 segments of a star anise
1 tej petta leaf
the seeds from 8 green cardamon pods

leave to cool and then grind with the rest of the spices

[livo]

14 different Garam Masala formula.

Here is a spreadsheet analysis screen capture of 14 different Garam Masala recipes.  I hope to standardise them soon for a clearer picture of the ratios of different spices.  In general there appears to be 11 common spices (possibly 9 or 10 and some would say 12 by including fennel seed) and comparison is made to the first one which is claimed to be a commercial formula including anti-caking and moisture absorption forms of silicon dioxide and silica powder.

If you open the link in a new tab or new window you can zoom in to enlarge it.  All of these are simply extrapolated from different online recipes and youtube (mainly hindi) videos.

[Peripatetic Phil]

Just testing

[livo]

OK. That worked Phil if I open Excel first then tell it to open your file and ignore the warnings.

I can't get rid of the .xlsx file extension.  If I just rename the file Garam Masala.txt it still keeps the extension so the file is actually Garam Masala.txt.xlsx.  I could possibly do it in Command Prompt if I remember my DOS commands.  Is there an easy way?

I can't even rename or copy the file in DOS / Command Prompt for some reason.  It keeps telling me the system can't find the file but it is there to see using DIR command.

[Peripatetic Phil]

When I downloaded my test attachment, I just used the "Save as" option to change the extension on the fly ...  You will need string quotes around the name in the CMD interpreter as it (the name, not the interpreter) contains spaces.  Oh, I see, I mis-understood :  you want to rename your own spreadsheet.  When you view it in file explorer, do you see the extension ?  If not, you will need to enable that, then press F2, END, 4 x rubouts, then ".txt".

** P.

[Secret Santa]

1 tsp triphala powder

I'm not too proud to admit I've never heard of it.

Apparently:

"Triphala is an Ayurvedic herbal rasayana formula consisting of equal parts of three myrobalans, taken without seed: Amalaki, Bibhitaki, and Haritaki."

Still none the wiser!

Perhaps it's the secret ingredient?

[livo]

Here is the Spreadsheet renamed as a text file if anybody is interested in playing around with it for their own purposes.  It doesn't perform any calculations but is just a handy format to manipulate and compare.  Simply rename it to .xlsx file extension or just force Excel to open it ignoring any warnings.

I began doing some standardisation yesterday afternoon (different file) and the first thing I've noticed is that there is a glaring anomaly in how many individual pieces of spice are used when compared to the listed ingredients (where provided as some videos didn't), most notably with the cardamom.

It's probably an exercise in futility but it gave me something to do on a rainy afternoon in enforced isolation.  I think I am going to do 2 different manipulations.  One based upon a Standard measure of Cumin (because it's nearly there already and is easiest to do). From that I will then do a second manipulation to standardise to an approximate standard yield of 100g as provided in the "Commercial" formula.

Where a 4" stick of cinnamon is noted it was clearly "Cinnamon" whereas the others were clearly "Cassia Bark" referred to as cinnamon.
Note that one formula says to use anywhere between 1 TBSP and 3/4 Cup of each Black Peppercorn and Clove depending on preference while all other ingredient spices are fixed.

[Peripatetic Phil]

Open fine here, Livo, but if I were planning to do any work on it I would separate out the units into their own columns.  Then the "amount" column would consist solely of numbers, and an Excel formula could then map the combination of number and associated unit into canonical units (e.g., gm).

** Phil.

[livo]

Yes. At the moment it is unfriendly to formula or mathematical manipulation. Just a convenient storage.