Tamarind paste/Tamarind pulp ( Puli Paste) is one of the most important ingredients for making sambar, rasam, vathakuzhambu in South Indian cooking. I have seen my friends buying tamarind paste from stores every month in their grocery purchase. But I don’t have the habit of using store bought tamarind paste as I am concerned about the use of preservatives. So I soak tamarind everyday before I start cooking and take tamarind pulp freshly. But most of the time I forget to soak and do it in last minute by heating the tamarind in water for quick soaking
. Recently when I was talking with my friend Shalini, she told about her homemade tamarind paste. She said its handy for quick cooking and the wastage of tamarind would be very much reduced. She told me to try it once to believe
.Last week I made tamarind paste just for 1 week usage and stored in refrigerator.As she told, its really useful and I am impressed with this. It saves more time especially while cooking during busy morning hours. I am sure it would be a big help for working women. You can make it in bulk quantity and preserve for months by keeping in refrigerator. It would be much better than store bought tamarind pulp. Lets see how to make tamarind paste at home and store it.
Homemade Tamarind Paste
How to make tamarind paste at home
Cuisine: Indian
Category: Coking basics
Serves: –
Prep time: 30 Minutes
Cook time: 20 Minutes
Total time: 50 Minutes
1 cup – 250ml
- Tamarind – 200gms
- Water – 1 cup
- Salt – as needed
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METHOD
- Soak tamarind in 1 cup of hot water for 30 minutes to 1 hour. Tamarind will become soft and well soaked.Squeeze the tamarind and remove seeds, grits if any. ( If you feel, there are more hard shells/ grits, add 1/2 cup more water while soaking so that all the grits will settle down, remove the thick tamarind OR squeeze the tamarind hard so that the grits will settle in your hand) Grind the soaked tamarind adding little water. Grind to a thick paste. Mix with the soaked water and transfer the paste through a colander and squeeze the paste well. Discard the waste if any.
- Add the required salt and store in an air tight glass bottle ( preferably) and refrigerate it. You can follow this method if using the paste for one week to 10 days. If you want to preserve the paste for more than a week, proceed to the next step.
- In a wide bowl, take the tamarind pulp and boil for 5 minutes in medium flame. It may splash everywhere. So keep it closed and stir it once or twice in the middle carefully. Switch off the flame. Mix well and let the paste cool completely. Tamarind paste resemble like a cream.
- After the paste is cooled down completely, store in an air tight glass jar and preserve it for months. You can also keep it in a porcelain jar( Peengaan jaadi).
- Add 1.5 tbsp of this paste for sambar, 2-3 tbsp for vathakuzhambu and 1 tbsp for rasam based on the number of serving.
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Note
- You can preserve this tamarind paste for months only if its cooked.
- If the pulp is raw, you can store it only for a week or max 10 days.
- You can add 1 tbsp of cooking oil to the paste while it boils which acts as a preservative. But I used only salt.
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Make your own homemade tamarind paste and use it for your quick cooking !
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Thank you,Chitra.This is very useful.:)
Thanks Geetha 🙂
Useful post,thanks for sharing Chitra.
Thank you Suja 🙂
This is such a useful post! Some recipes call for tamarind paste and I simply skip because I don't have it… will pin this and make it and stock some in my fridge for the rainy days… Thank you so much for sharing…
Thanks Rafee. It sure helps 🙂