Hi to all

I belong to North India. I am not good at cooking. When I prepare meals, sometimes I put less salt or sometime more. The ratio is not correct which doesnot result in good taste. I dont know how much salt,pepper and spices to be put in how much quantity.

another problem is preparing meals in large quantities. when i have to prepare for guests, i dont know how much quantity would be adequate for how many persons

Mamta pls help me out. My husband is very fond of punjabi food. any particular dish i should make for him?

A little help from me while you wait....

Salt is mainly personal taste but too much makes things hard to eat. Here in the UK our recommended daily intake of salt shouldn't be more than 6 grams, so you can imagine you shouldn't be putting more than half of that in any one meal.

As for how much spice to use, again odd things like garlic might need a little more or a little less depending on how much you like it, but all the recipes on this site have the amount as a good starting point (which is pretty much spot on)..

If you want to make more than say the 4 portions that the recipe might be for, you would double every ingredient listed and it would then work for 8. You might have to add a little extra cooking time to make sure everything gets its fair share of the heat.

Most of the recipes say how many its for, so if you make it and divide it out into that many portions it will give you an idea of how much. This however is down to personal wants and needs, if you are a farmer working from dawn till dusk moving heavy crops about you would be burning more calories up than the average person so would require bigger portions... and if you sat at a desk all day and took little or no exercise you would require much less..

hope some of this helps (or even makes sense)..

Steve

Thanks Steve but my point was little different. Say if i making 500gm of any vegetable, how much salt, pepper and other spices do i need to put?

Do you mean when simply boiling or steaming raw vegetables to be served as they come?.. if so a pinch of salt in the water and you wouldn't normally add spices unless you were making an actual dish (which would have a recipe)?

sorry but I may be missing your point again...

Steve

Hello Charu

Most recipes give the amount of salt and spices you need. As Steven AskCy says, you can calculate and adjust to the amount you are cooking by simply multiplying or dividing. However, tastes vary and this can be a problem, specially with salt and chillies. Quality of spices and amount required can also vary, but the amount given of this site have been generally measured very carefully by me and mostly work, I hope. I would suggest that you add less than in a recipe to star with and 'adjust' toward the end of cooking, by tasting. You will get better at guessing as you practice, none of us were any good at this when we started, I can assure you. You will be fine.

As for cooking for large numbers, print out a recipe, calculate the amounts you need of each ingredient by multiplying, before you cook. It is so easy to get mixed up, if you do not do this at the beginning. When trying out a new recipe, I calculate and jot down the increased/reduced amount of each spice/salt/ingredient in place of the usual amount given in it. My recipes on this site are generally for 4-6 people.

It can be a problem to judge the correct amounts in Indian cooking, when cooking for large numbers. This is because there are no 'set' portions in Indian cuisine. Some foods are liked more than others by each person that you invite and thus eaten more of. You get to know this with time, what is popular and what is less popular. As a general rule, if you are cooking only one or two dishes, simply multiply the recipe by the number of people it says it serves. If you are cooking a lot of dishes, cook half or 2/3rd the amount per person. No one can eat the 'usual/normal' amount of each individual dish when there are many dishes to eat.

I am known to cook ‘more’ than I need and then either give people food parcels to take away or freeze portions later on. If you freeze food after a party, make sure that you do not leave it lying around in the kitchen all night. Freeze it soon after the party. At the very least, put it in the fridge until the next morning.

Hope this helps?

Mamta