Introduction to Traditional Indian Cooking

Background: In our country the good old traditional cooking place was treated with utmost purity, something close to temple, let’s say. In olden days there has been restriction as to who can enter kitchen and what kind of attire they should adorn and so on. The biggest taboo was even the woman of the house was not allowed to enter the kitchen during her menstruation days since she was considered impure then. The traditional kitchen, the Chulha or Angithi or stove – the old cooking mediums were worshipped on a few occasions connecting them to a festival.

The traditional Indian cooking is qualified by adding variety of herbs and spices to our home grown vegetables and pulses keeping in mind the widely practiced vegetarianism across many parts of the society in our country. Each section has their unique cooking technique with a wide collection of cuisines which varies from one province to other.

History:Going by the history we find that our land has experienced widespread migration from one region to other in search of livelihood primarily through ages and our cuisine is largely benefited from this diversified cross culture food influences. Different weather conditions in the regions varying from subterranean stifling humid to high altitudes has fairly helped us widen the range of ingredients in our cooking. As I have mentioned above the medium used for cooking and fire are worshipped with faith attached to it, similarly food has also been a indicator of social and religious identity with varying prohibition and choices. Say, for instance Jain community would not eat roots or any vegetable that is grown below the ground level like ginger, garlic, onions beetroot, zaminkand or suran (Amorphophallus paeoniifolius, a botanical name) and potatoes. Since ancient times, vegetarianism has strongly influenced over Indian foods with section of our Hindu, Jain and Buddhist communities. The data does say that people who follow a strict vegetarian diet make up 20–42% of the population in India, while less than 30% are regular meat-eaters. Though there has been a cross cultural change in the food habits too, the present modern urban population has become more health and physique conscious and are turning vegetarian.

Though the urban population has resorted to various modern cooking methods, gadgets and all sorts of ready to use paste and even cooked food which is just at a microwave distance, yet even today, I strongly believe the goodness, the richness and the aroma still lies in our basic traditional cooking that we have inherited from our mothers and if we strive to retain it, we can hand it over to our generations ahead too..