 My wife tells me that my salads tend to be on the dry side. So, she toss her a new one? No, I just know it's something that needs a dressing. Mine was better. Josh! Hey, welcome back to our Stupid Directs, of course. I'm Rick. He follows Instagram, Twitter, Word, and she's got it. Friends, friends, that's the place. Come and talk to my face. Follow us through Twitter accounts, subscribe to the like button. Today, we got a video, this is from Wired, which is MasterChef Answers Indian Food and Curry Questions. So, this is an older-known Indian chef that he goes over some questions people ask about Indian food and how it's made and different kind of stuff. Awesome, going to be very educational, hopefully. Speaking of food, I saw a lovely little Instagram reel of Gordon Ramsay, because he loves burgers and he's talking about his love for burgers. You know where he loves to get a burger of most places ever? He said, if I've really done some big cycling, biking, or something, I go to In-N-Out and I get a double-double animal style. And he said, bloody hell, they need one in London. He said, everything about them is so good. Agreed, it's the best fast food burger. Without question. Fast food. And the fries. No. Oh, I love the fries. The fries are absolutely shot. Oh, no, I love the fries. Like, it tastes like cardboard. No. I love In-N-Out burgers in terms of fast food burgers. They don't compare when you compare them to like five guys and stuff like that. But in terms of, if you're comparing to McDonald's or Jack in the Box, Burger King, Wendy's, there's no contest. Yeah, there's no contest. It's definitely the best fast food burger there is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyways, here we go. But the fries are shit. No, you have to eat them hot for great. They're delicious. The only edible way to eat the fries is animal style. No. Here we go. I'm Chef Marilyn Arani. Hi. I can answer some questions from Twitter. This is Indian Food Support. See how much we know. At Molson Hart, traditionally Indian food is all that's served with yogurt. Why is that? Yogurt serves two purposes. Oh, you're talking about the side. The spices. Number two, it's a great- I was thinking made with it. Also, fun fact about yogurt, it's used a lot in marinades, especially in northern cuisine. The enzymes in the yogurt help tenderize the meat just as we use vinegar a lot in cooking. In certain types of cuisines, we use yogurt in India. At Teresa on Twitter, how is food different in different regions of India? Great question. Let's look at the Indian food map. India is a subcontinent. So it's best to think of it as a continent, like Europe, where even though there's a similarity between the different types of European cuisines, they're still distinct and individual. North India. This is the same with languages. The languages are the great mountain range, a lot more dairy, a lot more protein-based. And also, this is- Even in Italy itself. And the regions are different. And the region is kind of made their way down and invaded India, bringing with them meats, goat, lamb, chicken, agar, over here on the West Coast, Gujarat, a lot of the cuisine that are influenced by East African ingredients. Think tamarind, think okra was brought over. The chickpeas, especially- Oh, show me the fish. That looks amazing. South India. Show me the fish in the East. It's humid, it's hot. Food is funky, fermented, and spicy. So over on the other side of the Bay of Bengal, the Bengali cuisine is famous for its sweets. These guys are- And it's fish. Converting milk into the most incredible confection they've ever had. What about the fish? Can you explain to me why chicken tikka masala is British? So after the British colonized India for 150 years, obviously a lot of Indians went to England, set up shop, and many of them opened restaurants. Some famous restaurateur in Glasgow invented chicken tikka masala. Legend has it that this restaurateur was trying to figure out a way to use leftover tamarind chicken. He wanted to put it in a gravy or sauce that wasn't as spicy. That's how it came up? So he used a can of tomatoes. I went on a bunch of them. It was just a- He used these leftover pieces of stuff. A bunch of Americans who loved chicken tikka masala. Their favorite dish is actually British. I'm guessing you mean as in Indians, not the eastern part of India. We were happily just Indians and then along in Columbus, and now there's West Indians and Native American Indians. Columbus, what a guy. They absolutely have health benefits. They didn't even land here. Fucking cunt. It's the most popular and the most well-known, of course, anti-inflammatory benefits. Turmeric also has antibiotic benefits. So we use it on cuts and wounds often. Ginger for digestion. Black pepper for blood pressure. Yes. Fennel for digestion and Johnny and I eat fennel all the time. With your help. At the Spice Tailor, who had the greatest influence in Indian cuisine? Oh. White people. Indians, Arabs, Indians. India has been occupied and colonized for thousands of years. But the most recent and most important influence on Indian food was probably when the Portuguese came through the Americas and picked up chili peppers. Tomatoes, potatoes, bottom to India and trans-Indian tomatoes. It's a bit harder to imagine, but until about the 15th century, Indian food really wasn't that spicy. Before the chili pepper, no real heat. After the chili pepper, just heat all the way. Because of the call. Why is Indian food not more popular? Define popular. Yeah. There's almost 90,000 Indian restaurants in America. I would say that America is probably the last frontier for Indian cuisine. In most of the rest of the world, Indian food is extremely popular. In fact, in England, it's probably the national cuisine of that country. The majority of Indian food in America tends to be either really heavy or tends to be really spicy. Well, that's not true, actually, of the cuisine in India. So there's a whole host of young chefs that are now cooking the kind of cuisine from all over India that's gonna change the way Americans think about it. Love it. That would be great. Think, Panther. Yada, someone tell me why is this dosa thing everywhere? Because it's delicious. It's cooking easy to make. Let me show you. So first, you need a thick metal cooking surface, preferably a griddle that's completely flat. Next, dosa batter. What it is, is you soak rice and lentils overnight, then you grind them up, and then you let it ferment. And then with a flat bottomed spoon, spread the dosa out, starting from the center, trying to get as thin as you can without tearing it. And then with a stick of butter, come in and do the edges first. And this does two things. Besides adding deliciousness, it also helps the dosa come off the flat top easy and make sure that the outside of it is that perfect amount of crispy. But unlike a pancake, we're not gonna flip this over and cut the other side. You can put any kind of stuffings you want on the inside. The grated cheese. The greatest breakfast of all time. The leftover chicken from your chicken curry. And then once you're done, you fold it over, not so bad dosa. Given that we're doing this for tech support. At ASV Padel, why are these TikTokers saying Trader Joe's Indian food can't miss bro? It's actually terrible. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Some of it not so great. Some of it's pretty legendary. I gotta say, if all the frozen Indian food that I've tried, especially as a college kid, Trader Joe's more often than not nailed it. I've heard that before actually. A serving size of samosas is the same as a serving size of samosas, right? Are you talking about the Girl's Guard cookies? Like, it's a little bit straight. Samosas, that's what it looks like. This thing probably goes back thousands of years. I've seen these made with dough and on the inside can be anything you want, but traditionally in India- Such a great portable snack. And peas. These smell like aromatic spices. So I'm picking up a little bit of cumin, a little bit of coriander. Do I sense a... Yes, a sous-saint of garam masala. A deja vu asks, is the correct way to eat Indian food with your hands? There's no correct way to eat Indian food. Poor Indian families didn't grow up with utensils. If you think of the knife and fork, it's more of a modern day European-style invention. Yes, so traditionally, I still like getting it there with my hands. The roast is my wife. So does my wife. There's a great vehicle for picking up your curries and sauces, but you can rock a knife and fork. Nobody's gonna judge you. If you're gonna eat Indian food with your hands, use your right hand and try to keep the food below the first knuckle. It's just etiquette. At the editor-in-cheek wants to know, is there a real difference between Indian naan, paratha, and roti? Yes. They all seem about the same to me. No. Let's start with the roti, the most basic of Indian naan. It's a very flaky tortilla. You just take flour, water, a touch of oil, make a little ball, roll it out, cook it on a flat top, and you've got yourself a roti. Paratha is roti and stir-up. Yeah, thicker. Some sort of oil or fat added and layered. Kind of like a croissant. You get a little puffiness. Essentially, they're the same thing. This is the poor man's bread. This is the rich man's bread. And then the last is the naan. It's really a north Indian naan. Which you should always eat with rice. Am I right, Corbin? While a roti and a paratha can be done at home, a naan's almost never made at home. This is what we used to. Usually with children, the bread is baked in a 900 degree oven in 30 seconds. And that's why naan tends to be the fluffiest and the stretchiest. And the most delicious. And yes, the most delicious. Seema Dreama. While ordering Indian food, what else can be Vindaloo? Hashtag, brown props. I like the way you think Seema. You can Vindaloo just about anything you want. Traditionally, Vindaloo is made with pork. The Portuguese introduced the Vindaloo technique. If you actually think of it the word is vá da alo, vinegar and garlic. That's how they preserve the pork on the long journey from Portugal all the way to India. Well, the place where they arrived in Goa, we got a taste for this garlicky vinaigre pork and decided to add a lot of chilies and chili pepper to it, turn it into a curry, hence the Vindaloo. You can put lamb, chicken, you can make a potato version if you want a vegetarian. You can put tofu, you can put tempeh. Heck, you can even use peacock. I don't care. Seema Dreama. At for Karen. This is surely a very dumb question, but how similar a Pakistani is. That is not a dumb question. I look Indian, but I've never had Pakistani. Not a dumb question. Yeah. Again, Pakistan is. It's a great question. North West of India. So the cuisines of that part are very similar. In fact, you could say there's probably no difference between Kashmiri cuisine in the India part and Kashmiri cuisine in the Pakistani part. They used to be one country once upon a time. So think of it as a region. So the cuisine is going to be the same. Atlantis child, guys, what is chai spice and does it make it their friends? Unfortunately, Starbucks has convinced everybody that a chai is supposed to taste like potpourri. It's not. Just get rid of the pumpkin spice latte. Get rid of the chai spice. Just use fresh ginger, mint or cardamom. Mint. Mint. However, you can use chai spices. The first time I've ever heard mint. Delicious in cookies and cakes. At its Liam Treffery wants to know what makes a curry a curry. Calling it a curry. Essentially any gravy in India. Yeah, that's gravy. You can also call it a sauce. The term was very recently invented maybe within the last 75 to 100 years became equated with the term curry denoting a sauce. And then also became equated with a spice blend called a curry powder. Blend with turmeric, curry leaves and a bunch of other spices everywhere you go. Curries are different. There's Japanese curries, there's Thai curries. And of course there's even curries in India now because we start calling it curry. At Sana 2K2, which according to you is the street food capital of India. Hashtag Delhi, hashtag Mumbai. Absolutely hashtag Mumbai. Mumbai is the New York city of India. It's where immigrants from all over the country That's not a hot take, I'm sure. To play and to eat. And they bring with them their cuisines. They bring it to the streets and kind of like a DJ with putting together a mixtape. They mash up these incredible flavors to come up with street food that just is mind blowing. At Thundur Fish Town. We should know how a Thunduri oven works. Who wants to know how does a Thundur oven work? Well it used to be a hole in the ground. Now they're above ground. The semi-spherical shape captures heat, radiates it back and creates a convection effect that just increases the temperature that you can get from a limited amount of fuel. So just like in a pizza oven, you can put it in a pizza and get it out in 45 seconds. And a Thundur oven, none should come in and out in 45 seconds to a minute. We now cook lamb, chicken. I'm sure they do to other places, but when I was a little kid, they did that in Iran and it fascinated me. I hate insight. You can't just stick it in and forget it. You've gotta put the chicken in on the skewer, then pull it out and let it rest and put it back in and pull it out and let it rest and it takes a long process to make Thunduri chicken. That's why when you order in the menu, you gotta wait 45 minutes for it to come up. At Charles Finch, what are the absolutely indispensable spices for someone who wants to cook Indian food? Depends on what region you're in. There's probably 18 different varieties of Garam masala depending on where in the country you're in. The word masala means a blend and mixture. And the garam part technically means warm or hot, but that's not because it's spicy, but because these are aromatic warming spices. But the common ingredients of garam masala are cinnamon, we're all familiar with, cardamom, the little green pot that just keeps giving, black pepper, a couple of grains of those, a clove, now on top of that, you can add some cumin, you can add some coriander. You can mix and mash these in millions of combinations to produce different flavor profiles. At Spence Rabia, our most popular Indian restaurants outside of India serving North Indian food. They are here. Unfortunately, yes. It is the most popular version of Indian food in America, bought to America by Indian expats that were trying to imitate the kind of cuisine they were cooking in England. It's the food of royalty, it's the food of weddings, and it's what's become most popular in strip malls and like people down the clock restaurants all throughout the USA. At Alya WHS asks, what's the origin of butter chicken? Does anyone know? I always thought it was a modern day recipe. Well, you are correct. It's a very recent invention, legend has it, that the famous Moti Mahal restaurant in Delhi that claims invented the Thunduri chicken also claims invented butter chicken. The sauce has got tons of heavy cream, tons of butter. Oh, it's so good. Beautiful, smoky chicken. I love butter chicken. That's leftover from the day before. What makes it different from chicken Tikka Masala? Chicken Tikka Masala is used with yogurt, tends to be a little tangy, a little too acidic for me. Butter chicken is just warm, aromatic, just delicious because of the smoking technique that just gives the Rumbami to die for. Totally agree. One of the greatest exports of India and definitely one of the best selling dishes in my restaurant. At Sturt Up Mag, what makes it good curry? The secret to good curry is time. You gotta build the layers of flavors slowly, don't rush it, especially the part where you're cooking your onions, you wanna caramelize those onions, get all the moisture out of it, bring the natural sweetness out of the onions, and then same with the garlic, the same with the tomatoes, whatever you're using to make your curry, give it time. Cook it to where it's not burnt, but just absolutely packed with flavor. At Zen Mode Paneer, what's your favorite Indian street food and where have you had it? Great question. Absolutely hands down pale curry, my favorite Indian street food. It's what I used to cut out a class, go down to M.G. Road, the main street in my hometown of Amalaya to have pale curry. Super simple puff rice, I mean, think sort of rice, crispy treats, small diced red onions, cilantro, heaping piles of it, this tamarind and date chutney, the ketchup of India, and then green chutney made with mint and chilies and lime and cilantro, and then you just toss it all together, top it with this crispy, crunchy, chippy noodle to save, and a little bit of pale masala. And then last but not least, we're gonna put the puri, these wheat crackers, I mean, think of roti that's been fried. Oh, get in there with your hands. And this dish for me represents the street food of India more than any other dish, because every one of these ingredients comes from a different part of the country, and all came together on the streets of Mumbai at Nicholas and Dolores. Is it like an Indian food faux pas to put rice in my curry, or is that normal? Put your rice in your curry, don't worry about it. Rice and curry are meant to be eaten together, put the curry in the rice- What about rice and naan? Put the lime and the coconut, it's okay. At Piri Piri fries, the cheesification of Indian street food, why? It's driving me crazy. I mean, seriously, like it's really just processed cheese. Amul is the brand that we all grew up with. Think Velveeta or Kraft straight out of the tin. We don't really use this at home much, maybe in the occasional sandwich or two. But for some reason, in the last five years, the street vendors are literally grading it on everything. All over Mumbai, street vendors. It's like a fricking zombie- Is that the wrong with a good amount of cheese? Putting it all over a warthog? How crazy is that? Uh-oh. At Suvi Shaf 2C. That's the American in me. You know how many varieties of rice there are in India. Come on. There's gotta be a million varieties of rice in India. The most popular is Basmati rice. My grandparents were actually rice farmers and they grew Basmati rice. But if you're gonna cook a biryani, that gorgeous complex Indian rice dish, just layered with flavors and meat and onions and yogurt layer upon layer, that is the king of Indian cuisine. You gotta use Basmati. So, those are all the questions I have for today. That's the rice my wife, that's the one she always uses in Basmati. Thanks for watching. I was wondering if we get to any biryani. Yeah. What a great video. Very informative. Yeah. He knows what he's talking about. I thought it was very funny that he said, what's the most influential person on Indian food? He said, white people, white people. We know what he's talking about. Yeah. Not because they cooked it. No. Because they invaded it. Yeah, they've perverted it. And brought it. But it kind of makes sense. Yeah, it does. It makes sense. Yeah, it was a great video, man. It was a wonderful video. I'd never seen him before. I wonder where he's a chef. Maybe New Yorker or something like that? You wouldn't surprise me or maybe in India. I don't know. But really, really loved being a student of what he was teaching there. I mean, some things we did know, but a lot of that stuff in there, I had no idea. But it did. The thing, I mentioned this maybe once before, this specific thing. When I was a kid, I was filming a movie in Iran. It was the first time a US production company had partnered with an Iranian production company. And there was an actress named Puri Benai, who was a huge, huge star even today. If I tell Iranians who were around, I say Puri Benai. They say, oh, yeah, of course I know Puri Benai. And while we were there, we were there for about three months. I remember this one restaurant we would go to. And I would be utterly mesmerized and fascinated by the guy who was in a deep squat at this, what I guess is a tenduary oven, and one of those circular stone with fire in the bottom. And he'd put the bread for the restaurant that we were eating against the walls. But he wouldn't use a tool. He would just stick his hand down into the flames and take it off the wall or stick it in and slap it. It's crazy. And I just remember I thought he was a superhero because he could stick his hand into flame. Yep. Yeah. And it was delicious. A lot of these articles I see that. Iranian food, Persian food is. I see a lot of these videos with him or the articles of it's basically saying that he wants to change his stereotype about Indian food. Great. Is he here? Is he in the States? I don't. I'm not sure. He looked like he had an American. It sounded like he had an American accent. 100%. But then also when he was referring to some of the things you could clearly hear. Yeah. I'm sure he's grew up. Spoken several languages. Yeah. But yeah, I don't know where his restaurant is. But is he really Debalmen at all? That's what I want to know. That's what I want to know. Acquiring minds want to know. Yeah, is he here? Is he in the States? I'm very informative for especially Americans who I obviously, I'm not saying we are experts in Indian. No, my story starts with the imagination. But we probably know a lot more than most. Yeah, we know more than the average bear here because we've just been around it now for four years. Yep. And we've tried a lot of it. Yep. Made a lot of it. Eating it in India. I married to an Indian woman who cooks Indian food at home. But it's one of those super interesting things that you said about the subcontinent of India. It's like. Right. Yeah, it's one country. But basically, I don't know how many states. There are 29 or something like that. Yeah. You got 29 different countries. Exactly. That was a great analogy. I'd never heard that before. And that is a really great way to describe India the same way you would describe Europe. Yeah. They're all European. But every little location has its own cuisine, its own language, its own sense of self. But they're all European. Hopefully. I would love to go to a Michelin star, which I don't believe we have one here. I think there's a Michelin star Indian restaurant in New York. Like, I want to try some really nice fancy, which is interesting, because just like I asked my stepdad, who is Hispanic, and I was like, why aren't there a lot of fancy Mexican restaurants, you think, because authentic Mexican food is for the people. Right. It's like, it's common food. Yeah, it's common people food. He said, so it's not really authentic Mexican food if you're making it fancy. Right. And so I wonder if it's similar with Indian food. Wouldn't be surprising. But obviously, you can do anything with Indian food. You really can. And Rani and I have a friend who is, she's really interested in not just introducing people into the reality of what she's Bengali, of what Indian food can be, but she knows enough about food and has done pop-up stands with her food that she wants to do twists on it. Very intriguing. Yeah. Yeah. Great video. Let us know what other videos from him or others that we can rec to down below.