15 Fun Indian Food Facts

It’s been a while since we did a fun fact segment.  Let’s bring that back, shall we?

1. So we all know India is widely known for its spices, but something you may be less aware of is the sheer extent of that!  At the moment, India produces the most, richest spices in the world.
2. Saffron wasn’t a thing before Greek, Roman and Arab traders came to India.
3. The Portuguese introduced potato, tomato and chili to India.
4. Also from the Portuguese: sugar.  Before Indians learned how to refine sugar from sugar cane, they primarily used honey and fruit to make dishes sweeter.
5. A well known Indian dish, Chicken Tikka Masala, was actually invented in Glasgow, Scotland.
6. Before 1960 there were no Indian Restaurants in America.  Today there are over 80,000.
7. Way back in the day, as in ancient times, Indians only had a few types of food and eating habits in the Indus Valley Civilization.
8. Indian Food is all about combining the six tastes, which are sweet, salty, bitter, sour, astringent and spicy.
9. An extremely common side dish in India are pickles.
10. Sweets are extremely important dishes during all types of celebrations, especially South India.
11. Kashmiri’s traditional cooking reflects that of Central Asia.
12. Of all the brilliant spices they’re known for, Pepper is the King.  One reason for this is that it mixes so well with salt, and it often plays such a key role in spicy dishes.
13. Dum biryani cooking originated in India.
14. Indian food is typically classified one of three ways.  Saatvic, which is said to bring you to higher states of consciousness, Raajsic, which is said to be the foundation of activity and motion, and Taamsic, which brings out negative feelings.

For more in-depth details about any of these, click here to read Story Glitz’s article on the matter.

The Science of India’s Culinary Art

I think anyone who knows someone who loves to cook can understand why people refer to it as “Culinary Arts”.  Dishes of all kinds have their own unique appearance, their own beautiful array of vibrant hues blended together that simply demand to have their picture taken.  Maybe it’s why artists have been painting the for centuries, but the truth is, cooking isn’t just an art, it’s part science as well.

I’ve already touched on how Indian food combines different types of flavors in a singular dish, but it actually goes much further than that.  Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology in Jodhpur has studies thousands of recipes and found that Indian dishes combine ingredients whose compounds don’t overlap.  This goes beyond the general taste too, not just spicy, sour or sweet but the building blocks that compose them.

In the west, food is mixed because they have many of the same of these compounds, such as beef with red wine, but this couldn’t be further from the truth with Indian food.  Often time individual ingredients share no common compounds at all, which is even less than a recipe made entirely at random.

It makes Indian food an entirely unique delicacy, and a real shame that it isn’t as wide spread in the United States as it should be!

For a continued reading, click here to view Yahoo’s article on the matter.