Hello everyone. Namaste.
I was lucky the other day to travel into the city and go to an Indian grocery for the first time ever. I picked up several things, one of them being a liquid tamarind concentrate from Thailand. The ingredients are tamarind and water. How could I use it? Do you know how long it will last? It's in the fridge now. There are no preservatives. I am thinking some drinks, tamarind chutney and maybe any type of curry that uses tamarind. What confuses me though is how much I would substitute for the dehydrated blocks that are typically used. I seem to remember reading on here that those blocks are better than the concentrate.
P.S. I'm the one who posted about the split urad dal not cooking. Well, I got some whole urad dal and tried to make a Dal Makhani. It turned out much more succesful than the other ones. The key was to ignore the 30 minute cooking advice in the recipe and cook for 4.5 hours. :O). The dals broke down and made the dish taste like creamy lentils rather than lentils in water.
Sorry I can't help you on this one, its not something I've come across (yet)
Maybe Mamta will have a better idea.
Steve
Hello Jonathan
Thai tamarind is slightly sweeter than Indian tamarind and you need to use a little more. You can use tamarind in chutneys, curries, dals, and anywhere you need to bring tartness to a dish. Most south Indian dishes curries will have tamarind. If you put tamarind in my search window, you will get a few recipes. The amount given is only a rough guide, as tamarind strength varies. The pulp you buy from Indian shops is darker in colour and has additives. You can buy tamarind pulp with seeds only where fiber has already been removed. You soak it, mash it and you can take the pulp out immediately. This is easier to use than the black.
The 20-30 minute cooking time given in Indian recipes is usually for pressure cooker. Most Indian cook their dals in pressure cookers.
When using tamcon, be sure that you put it in the curry (vegetable, meat, lentils, or even soups like rasam and sambar) about 3/4 of the way through cooking, where there is still enough time for the tamarind to loose its raw taste. If you added lemon instead, you would add that right when turning off the heat at the end of cooking.