 We have a bunch of questions Max. Oh wow okay. So let's start with once again I'm just just scrolling up. Narasimha and Parasram is asking is the use of ready-made masala powder is so rampant in our daily cooking but the perfectionists instead on making their own fresh masala powder does this matter to one's taste buds? Actually yes and it again it's yes it's partly yes it's also it's also because it depends upon how much your taste buds are you know receptive to this as well because you know for years and years if you're just not used to it then it'll taste completely weird but it's very simple and you could do anyone could do this right now is that I'm sure we all have like coriander seeds or something at home right so you also have an MDH coriander powder sitting in your pantry take some coriander seeds toast them lightly and then you know put it into a coffee grinder or a mixie and give it a quick grind it won't be as fine as the your MDH masala but the flavor that you will get will be so much different and one of the things and one of the things also is for example is hing right the hing which we all get is that white daba the powdery thing that's I forgot that like it starts with the K that company yes yeah the LG that's LG that's the one we we get and that's in the powder but if you somehow get your hand on the root itself and you kind of grate a bit of it you will see the burst of flavor like how much like maybe an entire tablespoon of that powdered LG will give you how much you know grating a small couple of fronds of true the root will give you and so it's it's a game changer any day and it doesn't take too much time as a so for example garam masala right if you think about garam masala you have cumin you have coriander you have a little bit of fennel you have some clove in there you have some ajwain some black pepper these are things which are very these are not fancy things and it's not like Shahjeera or you know like star anise which you don't have in your cabinet these are five six things you have in your cabinet almost every day so quickly just tossing them for a couple of minutes grinding them the same sad chole that you'll be making you think that you you've been eating will be elevated to a completely different flavor flavor also like for example in the in the south right for sambar the archivita sambar is a very popular thing and and it's it's because it's in the name you're freshly grinding what are you doing so you're you know you're grinding it right then and there and that's why that sambar is a lot more flavorful than an MTR packet of sambar powder that you bought to make it so it's it's it's it's it's light and day and any damage you should try it out not everyone has a time so what you could probably do is you can make your own garam masala in small batches keep it for make it on the weekend use it through the week but yeah do try it and you'll never touch that packet of MDH garam masala again right Kunal has Kunal Vaidya has a couple of questions was the entire MSG demonization about about the keeping out of the tastier option and protecting old methods but does it have any actual problems too uncle roger on youtube and facebook loves MSG and for the record i love MSG and i don't think MSG is wrong in fact there's more MSG in one packet of plates than in a in a tub of noodles exactly and and like i said right you have you have you have glutamates in tomatoes we we eat we go through tons of tomatoes in all our Indian cooking right if you're going to um like a restaurant and you're having any of these gravies they are rich in tomato because tomato is what giving you that meaty flavor and there there are document and if you go to youtube we'll find a few documentaries as well i think there's one on Netflix i'm not sure still there around and it's it's about how in the early 70s and all that you had cooks from japan and china you know who're coming into san francisco and setting up kitchens and that's when they saw people going in droves to these restaurants and kind of abandoning all these other cuisines so italian you know restaurants or other american fair they were kind of seeing empty uh empty tables versus you had lines outside the san francisco kitchens where you had all these chefs coming in from china and japan and that's where there was this huge thing back then to kind of demonize it saying and then you would have doctors also kind of you know giving these um these kind of paid things where they would say yeah it causes this because you know we tested five people and five people had heart attack um you know so you can make you can make whatever uh statistic you want if your sample size is carefully picked out and that's what caused that whole demonization and even back even in india also right uh if you grew up in the early 90s you would hear a lot of the the msg causes heart attacks and things of that because it was this advent of magi and uh there was a huge influx of these chinese restaurants that sprung up everywhere that then like a similar narrative started flowing through that you know msg causes heart attacks but again if you just look at it from from the chemical part of it it is monosodium glutamate and you have glutamates that are in infuriating mushrooms mushrooms have a huge amount of msg um agino motor is just a powder form that you can add it somewhere else but mushrooms have msg you've been eating mushrooms a lot um seaweed um has a lot of msg in it um and you know you see you see people you want you go eat sushi and it's wrapped up in seaweed and so on that's all msg but just that when it's in the powdered agino motor kind of a vial then you want to kind of demerase it kind of but again i am not here to kind of you know like be an evangelist for msg though i am in in ways um and a lot of my videos you will see msg is used um uh so for example uh one of the things i will use a lot is in onions right so caramelizing onions this is one of the things that gets me a lot everyone like oh yeah caramelize the onions and then you'll see even sanjeev kapoor and all that like for 10 minutes caramelizing onions onions don't caramelize in 10 minutes i'm sorry to say it doesn't happen onions caramelize again like just we just spoke about at what temperature sugars begin to caramelize sugars begin to caramelize you know at at a certain temperature and then so you need to be on like a medium flame give it time and slowly the sugars in your onions will caramelize and kind of break down it doesn't happen in 10 minutes however if you do want to speed up that one of the things you can actually use is baking soda right and same same thing like we spoke on in the potato one it the pectin baking soda breaks down the pectin and then that kind of speeds up your caramelization so another thing also people have just another reason i brought up is just like how we say msg is bad baking soda is bad oh you know if you go if you use baking soda in a cooking it's bad you use it in cakes you know you're not demonizing it then but then when you use it in other dishes you kind of have propaganda you still need it it goes into how much quantity of anything you use right uh you use like a tablespoon of baking soda and something then you get that whole acidic flavor in your mouth it doesn't cause any you know uh it doesn't cause you heart failure but your taste gets affected but a pinch of baking soda any day for onions give it a try um i think Kunal has a couple of more questions on um Kunal is asking uh any suggestions on useful kitchen accessory that should actually be more popular uh we had a similar question when Ashok Chris Fischok spoke so if you've got anything else that you'd like to add um i i'm probably the right wrong person to ask because i also end up you know seeing something and buying a lot of kitchen accessories and then i'm like this is absolutely waste uh why did why did they even get invented you know they look nice when you see them on a video and then you end up buying them but uh i will however do tell is that everyone um get two things for sure is a weighing scale and a thermometer right those two things i would say in addition to like knives and um skillets is that thermometers are are uh will help you you know get temperature i mean if you're baking for sure you need a thermometer but then they they're really good especially to understand what temperature your oil is in and a lot of a lot of your um accidents with hot oil occur because of not understanding the temperature of your oil so get a weighing scale because like i said a lot of measurements are good when you are actually doing them in grams versus in cups and uh so on and get a thermometer and there are but yeah i have a i have tons of other things but they're all useless they look good in one of those five minute chinese videos i go to aliexpress i buy them they break and then i curse myself for being stupid and then the cycle repeats yeah so in terms of thermometers we've got two types you know the probe ones and the surface ones which um i again the the surface ones is what i would uh prefer um a they're also cheaper to get then um you don't have to switch the batteries for a long time uh the probe ones you know look a lot cooler nowadays uh also i don't know with corona i think those i think might not be available for sale also nowadays but uh the the surface ones are best um you know you just dip it in oil it tells you exactly what temperature oil is also if you want to leave something in it you know that's when for example like we were talking about oil you can leave us your your uh surface temperature in your oil and you can see the temperature rising and so you know what it is versus hitting your gun and seeing what the temperature is so also it's a cheaper option and the surface one sorry the gun the infrared the surface one no that that's oh sorry the opposite yeah yeah get the one with the um with your needle that you can leave it in something versus uh going for the gun sorry i got them mixed up in my head yeah i just slightly okay i um any more questions i'm just looking at youtube i don't think there are questions there i think people are just like i'm just gonna go they're all going to go buy msg now and you should yeah it adds a lot of and one of the simplest things you do if you ever get msg take like a small pinch put it on the tip of your tongue you will literally like if you've seen dogs drooling that'll exactly what'll happen to you because that whole um and that's what umami is like umami makes your mouth uh water and then you get that uh taste that'll exactly happen if you put like a small pinch of msg on the tip of your tongue that's what's going to happen so if it does that that's what you can kind of then visualize that's what it's going to do to your dish as well is that you know it'll be uh you know mouthful and you'll you'll get that chat but uh um taste that you get so uh tadas uh says that the the hing the the apirangayam or the asafitida that we get in the bus also contain miter or floor maybe 10 degrees first so that also will impact the taste yeah sorry uh one more question kunal saying uh says uh please share advice tips or tricks from the approach you've used scientific approach views uh sure yeah i mean i do post them on twitter um and i if you uh recently i've started putting a lot of uh small uh two minute videos as well uh so you'll see things like i just mentioned whether you know like adding baking soda or or onions or potatoes or msg and um sometimes i also post uh videos of chopping uh especially because you know like if you're using this guy um i post videos of um chop because one of things and here's where people get wrong is if you have a knife right there are multiple ways to hold a knife you know this is you know the knife this way um if you're trying to murder somebody do it this way but one of the ways i and you see a lot of there are a lot of videos online is this pencil grip so you hold it like this like a pencil so your three fingers are down but your index finger and your thumb is what is holding the blade right so it's very much like a pencil now you have more grip versus like this and then it lets you go through your food lot with a lot more precision than you were doing this way so it takes a bit to unlearn uh if you've been using it uh this way but do try out the the pencil grip and it helps also there are videos uh please go look at them for especially the most important was when you're cutting an onion because the onion that has a thin uh layer and the knife can kind of skip over it is is is what they call the claw method right so you keep your hand on your onion like the claw and your knife is hitting your knuckles so it's hitting your knuckles like this and then you're cutting down on it and your as your onion is getting smaller you kind of curl your hands away so you're always hitting your knuckles and your knife never goes above your knuckles so that you don't end up chopping your knuckles so you're always this is how you're going right so you're always on you're using your knuckles as like a guide and then you're going through your um you know whatever you're chopping and that's makes makes it easier because you're using the rocking motion um this part is on the on the board so physics is also helping you and the weight is coming down so again like I was saying earlier you want to do things not because they're cool or something sometimes yes you know it's it's cool um but more in fact because it it makes it reduces your time right you want to get even cuts you want to not use so much effort to having to cut again if you're cutting like a pumpkin yes you have to use some pressure I get it but for potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, celery, all of these you want your knife to do the work and uh rather not you same thing goes for spinach or all of these so um yeah like I said there's tons of cooking uh chopping videos and um as well uh you can look up look up those and kind of kind of practice on how you should be you could be cutting which will kind of save your wrists you know in the long run a lot. Fantastic. Any other questions people? Okay so Kunal wants to add a list of things that Kunal is buying which includes MST baking soda, small chef knife, knife shaft, surface temperature and small weighing scale which I think works. Yes I think that that should be all you that's the basic minimum you should need to start out because you have a lot of these other things and even knives there's like so many different knives probably don't need them like a bread knife I mean unless you bake a lot at um or you know you don't you treat but again a chef knife can also cut cut through bread as long as it's sharp. This is a spatula uh you know regular spatula like one that we make koutu kuratta or the Japanese steppanyaki and the offset spatula to sort of flip over slightly better than the dosa therapy which is you know yes yes gets spatula and I nowadays I think you have the silicon ones again people are worried that you know oh silicone it will kind of melt into my food and so on no they don't they have the the silicone is not you know what you have in your eraser or something that for it to melt onto your pan. I've even made dosas using silicone I think when I'm not been able to find the other one but yeah they do have a pretty high resistance for heat and again they're easy to clean and you know food doesn't stick to them so yeah you could give those a try as well if not you know use wooden because the thing with wooden spatulas and so is that because they're wood or a peder of time either you know you they'll start getting chipping away and then your food particles all start getting stuck in that so it makes a lot more difficult to clean and sanitize and so on and then you actually have to sanitize your wooden spatulas every now and then versus you know saying something else so that's also one thing to think about wooden spatulas look really good if you're taking a picture on Instagram but then they also need a lot of caring than anything else oh yeah and I would say get a get a good cutting board get a big cutting board because that's one of the things I do a lot is I prep everything and that way exactly I know how much I have because a lot of times what will happen at least if that's if you're like me is I will see this entire cabbage I will chop it up and say you know I'm going to make something with cabbage and then I realize oh I only have two onions I only have because when you look at it I have onions I have cabbage I'm going to make something when I chop it all up I have a huge mountain of cabbage I only have two small onions and now I just not think what else can be done so get a huge get a bigger chopping board you have more space that way you can have everything on their onions are here you can cut your ginger garlic nitchi all in the side your vegetables go their tomatoes everything can be right there and then you're done versus you know smaller boards or things that again you can do smaller boards but then you have to transfer them into other bowls and things like that but a bigger board for a lazy person like me you know again if you were to see any of my videos you'll know I just cook off the board my mom actually was like use bowls they look nicer you know when you're making a video but I get so much work too much to wash this way I'm just washing one cutting board at once yeah also when you're using board do what the chefs do put a slightly wet towel underneath so it doesn't move around yes wet towel under the board it won't move otherwise you'll be cutting the board can't move around and then you lose some digits in your finger as well