I am sure every home has their own version of sambar masala powder. Here, I share my version which we usually prepare at our home every time.
Nothing can beat my grandma’s sambar and her sambar masala. Every Friday she used to prepare some type of sambar(If no vegetable is available, she prepares onion sambar). If she prepares it, I simply drink it instead of eating it with steamed rice. 🙂
This sambar masala can also be used for other curries where we need to use red chilli powder and coriander powder. I accept there is a slight change in taste but for some recipes this masala adds very good taste.
Basic Information:
Preparation Time: 1 hour
Idle Time: 5 hours
Makes: 1kg of sambar powder (approximately)
Ingredients:
Dry red chillies – 1/2 kg
Dhania/ Coriander seeds – 1/2 kg
Urid dal – 1/4 cup
Channa Dal – 1/4 cup
Toor Dal – 1/4 cup
Rice grains – 1/4 cup
Black pepper corns – 50 grams
Cumin seeds – 50 grams
Mustard seeds – 30 grams
Fenugreek seeds – 10-20 grams
Katti perungayam / Asafoetida – 20 gram, crushed (see notes)
Fresh Curry leaves – a big bunch, yields 1 cup approximately, optimum packing
Oil – 1 teaspoon
Method:
1) Sun dry all the ingredients for 5 hours separately.
2) On the same day, collect all of them and dry roast them in heavy bottom pan one by one separately until the ingredients gives a wonderful aroma. Rice grains should be opaque. I forgot to take picture of dry roasting coriander seeds and dry red chillies. Except those two pictures, all the other pictures are given here.
3) Dry roast curry leaves until they turn crisp.
4) Heat a teaspoon of oil and fry crushed, sun dried asafoetida for few minutes in another pan.
5) Allow the roasted ingredients to cool completely to room temperature.
6) Grind it using mixer/food processor to a fine powder. As I prepare it large quantity, I often grind them at Flour mills / Grinding mills.
7) Allow the ground powder to cool to room temperature by spreading it in a wide plate.
8) Store it in a clean dry air tight container.
Note:
1) If you are using katti perungayam or kootu perungayam, dry it well in sunlight and use. If you are not getting katti perungayam at your place, use a teaspoon of asafoetida powder. You can very well adjust the quantity as per preference.
2) If you are making this powder in large quantity, then store it in a big container. For daily use, store smaller quantity in small jar and refill the small jar weekly once using a dry spoon.This helps you to prevent bugs.
3) If you are not able to sun dry all the ingredients, directly you can roast them and make a sambar powder.
4) You can also add 25 grams of roasted poopyseeds/ kasa kasa for unique taste.
neat and beautiful presentation 🙂
Delicious and aromatic powder.
Deepa
Beautiful composition, loved it!! 🙂 Aromatic and flavourful sambar podi…
picture perfect!! did u leave turmeric or u dont add?
Nice clicks and good step-by-step description 🙂
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I dont add rice in my sambar podi, sounds interesting.Flavourful podi.
Simple and Yum!
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Neat and lovely presentation
great-secret-of-life.blogspot.com
Nice clicks and homemade are the best
@ Lavi, We don't use turmeric. But it can be added if required.
thx uma…very very helpful post
Very helpful post, nothing like making homemade sambar powder!
very informative post
This is a very useful post.Lovely presentation.
I am huge fan of homemade powders….bookmarking this to try out soon….
Thanks All. @ Priya, Rice grains act as a thickening factor here. It can be skipped it you don't prefer this.
Thank you so much…I am tired of using the powder available in the market. Taste wise not that great. Was looking for home made one. I will try this out soon….
I tried this recipe and it was superb. Accolades to the author – Uma. Please share if you have a masala that we can use for preparing Non Veg dishes.
Hi Uma, I am heading straight to the kitchen to try this recipe right away. It caught my eye, as it is an inherited recipe. Weren't our grand mothers amazing cooks! I hope I can make it a tiny bit as how she did. Will let you know how it turned out.
I would also be putting it up on my food blog triedntasted.weebly.com , and referring it back to you. If you have some spare time, it will be nice if you can visit my blog too.
Thank You for the recipe.
Hi uma ,
Can u pls tell 1/4 cup means how much in grams
Hi Anonymous, instead if 1/4 cup of dals in the above recipe, you can use 50 to 75 grams of each dal. (but, this is not metric equivalent for 1/4 cup)