Fixes for Indian Cooking: Common Problems and Simple Solutions
When your roti, a soft Indian flatbread turns rock-hard after cooking, or your dosa batter, a fermented rice and lentil mixture used for crispy pancakes refuses to puff up, you’re not alone. These aren’t failures—they’re fixable mistakes. Millions cook Indian food daily, and the same handful of problems pop up again and again: wrong spice blends, bad heat control, or skipping simple steps that make all the difference. The good news? You don’t need a chef’s degree. Just the right fix.
Take garam masala, a warm spice blend central to curries and biryanis. Many add turmeric or chili to it, but those aren’t part of the traditional mix. Get this wrong, and your whole dish tastes off. Or consider chutney, a condiment that can be sweet, spicy, or tangy, served hot or cold depending on tradition. Serving fresh mint chutney warm? It loses its brightness. Heating tamarind chutney? It deepens the flavor. Small changes, big results.
Chicken curry turning tough? It’s not the recipe—it’s the cut and timing. Roti going stale by lunch? It’s about dough hydration and wrapping it right after cooking. Even the urad dal to rice ratio, the key balance for fluffy idlis and crisp dosas matters more than you think. These aren’t secrets. They’re lessons learned from decades of home cooking across India’s kitchens.
Below, you’ll find real fixes for the most frustrating problems in Indian cooking. No fluff. No theory. Just clear, tested solutions—from fixing bitter dosas with the right amount of baking soda, to knowing which vegetables to add to curry so they don’t turn mushy, to spotting hidden non-vegetarian ingredients in supposedly pure vegetarian dishes. Whether you’re making biryani for the first time or just trying to get your rotis soft again, these posts give you the exact steps to fix it.
