Sabut masala ya pisa hua: what to buy whole, what to buy ground

The difference between a sabut masala and a pisa one is not quality. It is time.

What gives a spice its smell are oils held inside the seed or the bark. Whole, they stay sealed in. Ground, the surface area goes up enormously and those oils start to leave - into the air, into the jar, into nothing. This is why a packet of dhania powder opened three months ago smells like dust, while dhania seeds from the same harvest still smell like dhania.

Worth buying whole

Anything you use in a tadka goes in whole anyway, so there is no reason to buy it ground:

• Jeera, rai, methi, ajwain - these are thrown into hot oil as they are.
• Dhania and saunf - keep for a year whole, a couple of months ground.
• Kali mirch - the single biggest difference. Pepper ground at home and pepper from a packet barely taste related.
• Dalchini, laung, badi and choti elaichi, tej patta - the khada masala of a pulao or a biryani. Grinding these is throwing money away.

A small grinder, or the old sil-batta, handles all of them. Grind what you need for the week and no more.

Sensible to buy ground

• Haldi - grinding turmeric at home is genuinely hard work, and the root has to be boiled and dried first.
• Mirchi powder - the heat and colour you want are blended, and a good blend is hard to reproduce at home.
• Hing - it comes compounded already, and nobody grinds their own.

For these, buy small. A quarter kilo of haldi that you finish in two months is better value than a kilo that is dull by the end, whatever the price per kilo says.

Keeping them

Three things ruin a spice: light, heat and damp. So:

• Steel or dark glass, not clear plastic, and not on the shelf above the stove.
• A dry spoon every time. One wet spoon in a jar of dhania powder and it cakes within a week.
• Whole spices last about a year, ground ones two to three months before they flatten out. They do not spoil after that - they just stop doing their job.

How to tell a good one at the counter

Rub a pinch between your fingers and smell it. That is the whole test, and it is the reason buying masale from an open counter still beats buying them sealed. If it does not smell of anything on your fingers, it will not smell of anything in the pan.

Colour is worth less attention than people give it. A very bright red mirchi powder is not necessarily a better one - colour fades honestly with age, and a powder that has kept its colour perfectly for a year is worth a question rather than a compliment.

We keep both at Daldawala - whole and ground - and the whole spices are weighed out from the counter, not pre-packed months ago. If you want to smell something before you buy it, come to the shop on Sadar Bazar. If you already know what you want, the site will bring it to your door.