Homemade Sambar Powder Recipe. A quintessential must have spice powder of every South Indian household as sambar is a staple in every home cooked with different vegetables almost daily.
Sambar powder is basically a mix of whole spices that is used to add to sambar to give it spice and thickness.
It also gives a creamy & thick consistency so that the sambar can be easily mixed with rice.
Every family have their own recipe for making this staple powder.
Though the main ingredients of whole coriander seeds and hot red chilies remain the same, their measurements & the other spices added may vary from one family to the other.
Therefore there are many varieties of sambar powder which represents the South Indian cuisine and acts as a multipurpose powder on most occasions.
Not only is it added only to make sambar but it is also added to other recipes as well.
Like this quick rasam that I often make using sambar powder. I also add it to kulambu, kootu & poriyals.
Though many kulambu recipes call for kulambu milagai thool specifically, replacing that with sambar powder most of the times works well too.
Though I love making my own spice powders from scratch I also from time to time buy other ready made spice powder from shops to use in my day to day cooking.
This sambar and rasam powder are always made at home only. I have never bought both these powders ready made from the shops.
Though the powder can be ground at home in a mixie jar, I always prefer getting it ground in the flour mill as the consistency of the powder always comes out well & remains uniform.
One more thing is that the powder ground in a mixie jar tends to become dark as the heat of the motor is easily transferred to the powder making it dark. This is not the case with mill ground powder.
The idea of adding rice is because it acts both as a thickening agent and while making poriyals it coats the veggies well absorbing the moisture from the veggies.
Basically only round red chilies are used for making sambar powder, but sometimes which is very often nowadays, I also use 50% each of round & long chillies (neetu milagai) as it is both spicy & gives rich color to the powder.
The shelf life of this powder is 6 months though I finish using it up within 3 or 4 months.
Homemade Sambar Powder Recipe below:
Homemade Sambar Powder Recipe
Ingredients
- Round Red Chillies or gundu milagai – 1/2 kg
- Whole Coriander seeds or dhaniya – 1/2 kg
- Cumin seeds or jeeragam – 100 gms
- Black pepper corns or milagu – 100 gms
- Turmeric stalks or virali manjal – 100 gm
- Fenugreek seeds or vendhayam – 50 gm
- Bengal gram dal or kadalai paruppu – 100 gm
- Raw rice or pacharisi – 100 gms
- Curry leaves or karuveppilai – 2 fistfuls
- Rock salt or kal uppu – 1 tsp
Instructions
- Dry the chillies, coriander seeds, turmeric stalks and the curry leaves together in hot sun.
- Dry cumin seeds, black pepper corns, fenugreek, bengal gram dal together in hot sun.
- On the day you are going to the mill, add raw rice, rock salt and grind it.
- If you cannot dry in hot sun, you can dry roast all the ingredients individually one after the other except turmeric stalks and rice.
- Transfer it to a large plate, let it cool down completely, add turmeric and rice before taking it to the mill for grinding.
- You can also dry roast in a microwave following the same procedure of dry roasting on stove top.
Hi.. sorry but what are turmeric stalks?? Thank you for your amazing recipes!
Its called as “Virali Manjal” in tamil. Basically dried turmeric that is long and thin.
What is the quantity to take if am making for two to three times use ?
Hi .. what quantity should I take if am preparing powder for 3-4 times use ?