Ingredient Glossary

A quick-reference list explaining the flours, spices, chutneys and pantry items that come up across the recipes and technique guides on this site.

Ajwain (Carom Seeds): Thyme is the closest comparison for the strong aroma of these small seeds, often worked into samosa or kachori pastry. Beyond flavour, they're credited with easing digestion of fried food and adding a background warmth.
Amchur (Dried Mango Powder): Green mango, dried and ground fine, supplies the sourness in chaat masala and in fillings where fresh citrus isn't an option. Its tartness has a fruitier edge than tamarind or lime, and it reads as a distinct flavour in its own right.
Atta (Whole Wheat Flour): Everyday flatbreads run on this finely milled whole wheat flour, and a handful of regional puri recipes call for it too. More bran and germ than maida gives it away by weight, and that extra bran shows up as a denser bite with a nutty edge.
Besan (Gram Flour): Pakora batters, dhokla, khandvi, and crunchy toppings like sev and boondi all trace back to this flour, milled from skinned, split chickpeas (chana dal). Whisking it with water demands patience to avoid lumps, and many cooks give it a light roast before it ever meets a steamer.
Besan Batter Consistency Terms: Flour-to-water ratios prove unreliable on their own, so this library instead describes batter thickness as ribbon-consistency (a slow, unbroken ribbon off a spoon), coating-consistency (a thin coat on the back of a spoon), or pouring-consistency (flowing freely, like heavy cream).
Besan ka Sev: The fuller name for Sev, spelled out specifically to signal that gram flour, rather than one of the other flours occasionally used for similar fried, noodle-like garnishes, is what went into it.
Boondi: Pressing batter through a perforated spoon into hot oil produces boondi — tiny fried droplets of seasoned gram-flour batter. Sweetened, it ends up in desserts; salted, it lands as a chaat topping or gets folded into raita.
Chaat Masala: Dried mango powder and black salt anchor this tangy, savoury spice blend, rounded out with roasted cumin, coriander, and other spices. It's a finishing sprinkle for chaat, fruit, and roasted snacks, never a cooked-in ingredient.
Chana Dal (Split Chickpeas): Split and skinned, this pulse is distinct from whole chickpeas (chole) and shows up in certain fillings, or occasionally tempered whole in South Indian dishes purely for texture and nuttiness.
Curry Leaves: Briefly fried as part of a tempering step across South and West Indian cooking, these aromatic leaves come from the curry tree and can be used fresh or dried. Despite the name, they have no relation to curry powder.
Dahi (Yogurt): Whisked smooth and sometimes lightly sweetened or salted, this plain, thick dairy yogurt gets spooned over dahi puri, aloo tikki chaat, or papdi chaat. Full-fat yogurt that's well set holds its texture best under that treatment.
Date-Tamarind Chutney: Tamarind and dates (or jaggery), simmered with spices into a thick, cooked chutney, supply the sweet-sour counterpoint that balances chaat's heat and tang.
Dhania (Coriander): Two forms share this one name: coriander seeds, used whole or ground in spice blends, and fresh coriander leaves, known as cilantro, which double as garnish and form the backbone of green chutney.
Dhokla Batter: Steamed into a spongy cake and finished with a mustard-seed-and-curry-leaf tempering, this fermented or quickly leavened besan batter gets full treatment in the gram flour batter technique guide.
Garam Masala: Cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, and black pepper typically anchor this warming spice blend, among other spices. Added near the end of cooking rather than the start, it keeps its aroma vivid instead of cooking away.
Garlic Chutney (Dry): Pounded rather than blended smooth, this coarse, dry chutney combines garlic, dried red chillies, and often desiccated coconut — most recognisable as the condiment stuffed inside a Mumbai vada pav.
Ghee (Clarified Butter): Simmering butter down until the milk solids and water separate out leaves behind this shelf-stable fat, prized for its high smoke point and nutty aroma in both tempering and certain doughs.
Ginger-Garlic Paste: Ground together in roughly equal parts, fresh ginger and garlic form this smooth paste, used as a base aromatic in marinades such as chicken tikka and in various gravies.
Green Chutney (Coriander-Mint Chutney): Coriander and mint leaves, blended uncooked with green chillies and a souring agent such as lime or raw mango, make up this chutney, which turns up across nearly all chaat and plenty of fried snacks besides.
Gud / Jaggery: Boiling down sugarcane juice or palm sap, with no refining step, produces this unrefined sugar. Compared with the refined kind, it adds a deeper, slightly mineral sweetness to chutneys and certain masalas.
Haldi (Turmeric): A mild earthy bitterness and a distinctive colour come from this ground dried root, used in modest amounts and added early in cooking — tossed in at the very end, it tastes raw and chalky instead.
Hing (Asafoetida): Hot oil transforms this pungent resin, usually sold ground and blended with rice flour, into a savoury aroma close to umami within seconds. A single pinch, especially in garlic-free dishes, is typically what opens a tempering.
Idli Rava: Milled specifically for idli and dosa batters, this coarse, parboiled rice grit is a different product entirely from semolina (sooji), which comes from wheat rather than rice.
Imli (Tamarind): Sold as a block, concentrate, or paste, this sour pulp from the tamarind pod gets simmered with jaggery and spices into the sweet-sour tamarind chutney running through most chaat dishes.
Jeera (Cumin Seeds): A tempering (tadka) almost always opens with whole cumin seeds, bloomed briefly in hot oil or ghee so their aroma releases before anything else joins the pan.
Kala Namak (Black Salt): A sulphurous aroma, from naturally occurring compounds, sets this mineral salt apart — it's essential to chaat masala and to spiced chaat water. Potency is the reason it's used in small pinches rather than as a general table salt.
Kasuri Methi (Dried Fenugreek Leaves): Crumbled between the palms before use, these dried fenugreek leaves bring a faintly bitter, hay-like aroma common in North Indian gravies and some tikka marinades — and they go in toward the end of cooking, not the start.
Khoya / Mawa: Slow simmering reduces whole milk down to this dense, slightly grainy paste of milk solids, which shows up in certain festive snack variations and sweets rather than in everyday chaat.
Kokum: A souring agent used in parts of Western India, this dried, deep purple fruit rind brings a fruitier, less sharp sourness than tamarind and occasionally shows up in regional chutney variations.
Lal Mirch (Red Chilli Powder): Colour and heat both come from dried red chillies ground fine into this powder. Strength varies widely by regional blend, so any quantity given in a recipe here is better treated as a starting point than a fixed rule.
Maida (Refined Wheat Flour): Samosa and kachori pastry, along with bhature dough, depend on this finely milled, low-protein white wheat flour, roughly the equivalent of Western cake flour. Whole-wheat flour simply can't match the tender, flaky or puffed texture it produces on its own.
Momos Dough: Rolled thin to wrap steamed dumpling fillings, this simple, unleavened dough of refined flour and water needs to stay pliable enough to pleat without tearing, and dry enough not to turn sticky.
Moong Dal (Split Mung Bean): Sold with or without their green skin still on, these small split pulses turn up in savoury pakoras, certain dhokla variations, and lighter snack batters.
Mustard Oil: Pressed from mustard seeds, this sharp, pungent oil is traditionally heated past its smoking point before use, which softens its raw bite; it's common across parts of North and East Indian cooking.
Paneer: Curdling hot milk with an acid and pressing the resulting curds, with no aging or culturing required, produces this fresh, non-melting cheese. It shows up cubed and grilled in paneer tikka or crumbled into stuffed snacks.
Papdi: Flour, semolina, and oil come together to form papdi, a small, flat disc fried until crisp enough to shatter cleanly rather than bend. It serves as the base under papdi chaat and sev puri alike.
Poha (Flattened Rice): Rice that's been parboiled, flattened under pressure, and dried becomes poha, and it skips boiling entirely — a rinse and a short steam is all it needs. The breakfast dish sharing its name runs on it, and so do several chivda snack mixes.
Puri (Chaat Shell): Within the chaat family, puri refers to a small hollow sphere of fried semolina or wheat dough, puffed into a shell for pani puri or dahi puri — distinct from the puffed wheat bread of the same name served at ordinary meals.
Rai / Sarson (Mustard Seeds): Dropped into hot oil, these small black or brown seeds pop audibly, usually marking the first step of a tempering across South and West Indian cooking, often joined soon after by curry leaves and urad dal.
Rava / Sooji (Semolina): Crisp pani puri shells start here, alongside upma and instant rava dosa — all built from durum wheat milled coarse. Fine and coarse grades don't behave the same way in a recipe, which is why instructions usually specify which one is needed.
Rice Flour: Milled fine from rice, this flour appears in some dosa and idli batter variations and in certain chutney or batter-thickening steps. It doesn't behave like wheat flour, so it's not a direct substitute in gluten-based doughs.
Sabudana (Sago / Tapioca Pearls): Soaking rather than boiling is how these starch pearls, extracted from tapioca root, get hydrated. Sabudana vada is their best-known use, and because the pearls are grain-free, they also turn up often in dishes eaten during religious fasting.
Sev: A perforated press forces seasoned, fried gram-flour batter into thin, crisp strands to make sev. On its own it's a snack; scattered over bhel puri or sev puri, it becomes the crunch that holds the whole dish together.
Tadka / Tempering: Briefly frying whole spices, and often aromatics, in hot oil or ghee releases their flavour before they're stirred into a finished or nearly finished dish — that's tadka. A dedicated technique guide in this library covers it in full.
Urad Dal (Split Black Gram): Soaked and ground, this dense, starchy pulse gives idli and dosa batter their characteristic lift and gives medu vada its structure. Whole and split, skinned forms don't behave the same way and can't substitute for each other.