Ingredient Glossary

Short, plain-language definitions for the flours, spices, chutneys and pantry staples referenced throughout the recipes and technique guides in this library.

Ajwain (Carom Seeds): These small seeds carry a flavor close to thyme, intense enough to notice, and they're commonly worked into pastry doughs such as samosa and kachori casings. Tradition credits them with easing digestion of fried food, alongside the warm background note they contribute.
Amchur (Dried Mango Powder): Ground from dried green mango, amchur brings sourness to chaat masala and to fillings where reaching for fresh citrus isn't practical. Its particular fruity tartness doesn't taste like either tamarind or lime.
Atta (Whole Wheat Flour): Milled finer than most whole-grain flours, atta is the everyday choice for flatbreads and shows up in a handful of regional puri recipes too. Because it keeps more of the wheat's bran and germ than maida retains, it bakes up denser, with a subtle nutty edge to the flavor.
Besan (Gram Flour): Skinned, split chickpeas ground fine are what produce besan, the flour behind pakora and bhajiya batters, dhokla, khandvi, and crisp chaat toppings such as sev and boondi. Pour water in too fast and lumps form almost immediately, so a slow, steady whisk matters more than most cooks expect; toasting it lightly before folding it into a steamed batter also shifts its flavor noticeably.
Besan Batter Consistency Terms: Rather than specifying flour-to-water ratios, which prove unreliable across different flours and humidity levels, this library describes batter thickness in three practical terms: ribbon-consistency, where it falls off a spoon in one slow, continuous ribbon; coating-consistency, where it leaves a thin film across the back of a spoon; and pouring-consistency, which flows as freely as heavy cream.
Besan ka Sev: Nothing distinguishes this from plain sev except the name itself, which specifies gram flour as the base rather than one of the other flours sometimes used for similar fried, noodle-like garnishes.
Boondi: Seasoned gram-flour batter becomes boondi once it's passed through a perforated spoon and lands in hot oil as tiny beads. Make a sweet batch and it heads into desserts; salt it instead and it works as a chaat topping or gets stirred into raita.
Chaat Masala: Dried mango powder and black salt anchor this tangy spice blend, with roasted cumin, coriander and a few other spices filling it out. It's a finishing sprinkle for chaat, fruit and roasted snacks, never an ingredient that gets cooked into a dish.
Chana Dal (Split Chickpeas): Don't confuse this with whole chickpeas, known as chole — chana dal is the split, skinned version, used in certain fillings and sometimes tempered whole in South Indian dishes purely for its texture and nutty bite.
Curry Leaves: Pulled from the curry tree and given a brief fry in hot oil, these leaves are a tempering staple across South and West Indian cooking, usable fresh or dried. Despite the name, they share nothing with curry powder.
Dahi (Yogurt): Whisked until smooth and occasionally given a touch of sugar or salt, plain thick dairy yogurt gets spooned over dahi puri, aloo tikki chaat and papdi chaat alike. A full-fat yogurt with a firm set holds up best once it's part of an assembled dish.
Date-Tamarind Chutney: Simmering tamarind together with dates, or sometimes jaggery, and a handful of spices produces this thick, cooked chutney, whose sweet-sour profile exists specifically to balance out chaat's heat and sharpness.
Dhania (Coriander): Both coriander seeds, used whole or ground into spice blends, and the fresh leaves known as cilantro fall under this one term. The leaves do double duty as a garnish and as the backbone of green chutney.
Dhokla Batter: Either fermented over time or leavened quickly, this besan batter steams into a spongy cake and gets finished with a tempering of mustard seed and curry leaf; the library's gram flour batter technique guide explains how to get the texture right.
Garam Masala: Cardamom, cinnamon, cloves and black pepper typically anchor this warming spice blend, among other spices that vary by household. It goes in close to the end of cooking, which keeps its aroma intact rather than letting it cook off.
Garlic Chutney (Dry): Pounded coarse rather than blended smooth, this dry chutney combines garlic, dried red chillies and frequently desiccated coconut, and it's most recognizable as the layer stuffed inside a Mumbai vada pav.
Ghee (Clarified Butter): Butter loses its water through slow simmering, and once the milk solids are strained out of what remains, what's left is ghee: stable without refrigeration, tolerant of high heat before it smokes, and carrying a nutty smell that shows up often in tempering and in certain doughs.
Ginger-Garlic Paste: Grinding fresh ginger and garlic together in roughly matched amounts produces this smooth paste, a foundational aromatic for marinades such as the one behind chicken tikka and for a wide range of gravies.
Green Chutney (Coriander-Mint Chutney): Nothing about this chutney touches a stove — fresh mint and coriander go straight into the blender with green chillies and something sour, lime or raw mango usually, and the result ends up on nearly every chaat dish plus a long list of fried snacks.
Gud / Jaggery: Boiled down from either sugarcane juice or palm sap, this unrefined sugar brings a deeper, slightly mineral sweetness to chutneys and certain masalas, something refined white sugar doesn't replicate.
Haldi (Turmeric): Ground from dried turmeric root, haldi gets used in small amounts for its color and a gentle earthy bitterness. It belongs early in the cooking process, since stirring it in near the end leaves a raw, chalky taste behind.
Hing (Asafoetida): Usually sold ground and blended with rice flour, this strong-smelling resin mellows into something savory and nearly umami the moment it meets hot oil. A pinch is typically the very first thing added to a tempering, particularly in recipes that skip garlic.
Idli Rava: Milled specifically for idli and dosa batters, this coarse, parboiled rice grit is a different product entirely from semolina, which is wheat-based rather than rice-based despite looking somewhat similar.
Imli (Tamarind): Tamarind pods hold a sour pulp sold as a solid block, a concentrate, or a ready paste, and simmering that pulp with jaggery and spices produces the sweet-sour chutney that most chaat depends on.
Jeera (Cumin Seeds): Dropping whole cumin seeds into hot oil or ghee to bloom them is close to a universal opening move in tempering, done before anything else enters the pan, since that brief contact with heat is what releases their aroma.
Kala Namak (Black Salt): Naturally occurring sulphur compounds give this mineral salt its distinctive smell, and it sits at the center of both chaat masala and spiced chaat water. A small pinch goes a long way, so it's never used as an everyday table salt.
Kasuri Methi (Dried Fenugreek Leaves): Crumbling these dried fenugreek leaves between the palms just before using them releases the slightly bitter, hay-like aroma that defines a lot of North Indian gravies and a handful of tikka marinades. They belong near the end of cooking, not the start.
Khoya / Mawa: Slow-simmering whole milk down until only a dense, faintly grainy paste of solids remains is how khoya gets made, and it appears mainly in festive snack variations and sweets rather than anywhere in everyday chaat.
Kokum: This dried, deep purple fruit rind sours dishes across parts of Western India with something gentler and fruitier than tamarind's sharpness, and it occasionally finds its way into regional chutney variations as well.
Lal Mirch (Red Chilli Powder): Ground from dried red chillies, this powder supplies both color and heat, and how intense a particular batch runs depends heavily on where it's from. Any amount given in this library's recipes works better as a starting point than as a fixed figure.
Maida (Refined Wheat Flour): A low-protein white wheat flour close in behavior to cake flour, maida is what samosa and kachori pastry are built from, along with bhature dough. Nothing about whole-wheat flour reproduces the tender, flaky or puffed texture that maida delivers on its own.
Momos Dough: Just refined flour and water, with no leavening involved, make up this dough, rolled thin enough to wrap around steamed dumpling fillings. The right texture pleats cleanly without tearing, yet never crosses over into sticky.
Moong Dal (Split Mung Bean): Sold either with the green skin intact or without it, these small split pulses go into savory pakoras, certain dhokla variations, and lighter snack batters more generally.
Mustard Oil: Pressed directly from mustard seeds, this oil carries a sharp, pungent edge in its raw state, which is why tradition calls for heating it past its smoke point before cooking with it — a step that tames the rawness considerably. It's a fixture of cooking across parts of North and East India.
Paneer: An acid added to hot milk, followed by pressing whatever separates out, is all it takes to make paneer, a fresh cheese that holds its shape instead of melting under heat. It's cubed and grilled for paneer tikka, or crumbled into stuffed snacks, with no culturing or aging involved at any stage.
Papdi: A small, flat disc made from flour, semolina and oil, fried until crisp, papdi forms the structural base underneath both papdi chaat and sev puri. Fried correctly, it shatters at the first bite instead of bending.
Poha (Flattened Rice): Parboiling rice, pressing it flat, then drying it is the whole process behind poha, and the result needs only a short rinse and a bit of steam heat, never an actual boil. Besides lending its name to the breakfast dish built on it, it also appears in a number of chivda mixes.
Puri (Chaat Shell): Within chaat specifically, puri refers to a small, hollow ball of fried semolina or wheat dough, puffed into the shell that pani puri and dahi puri depend on — not to be confused with the puffed bread served at mealtime under the identical name.
Rai / Sarson (Mustard Seeds): These small black or brown seeds pop the moment they touch hot oil, which is why they're almost always the opening step in South and West Indian tempering, frequently paired with curry leaves and urad dal in the same pan.
Rava / Sooji (Semolina): Durum wheat, ground down to a coarse texture, is the starting point for crisp-shelled pani puri, for upma, and for quick rava dosa batters. Since the fine and coarse grades don't act alike once they hit a pan, swapping one in for the other without checking first is a real risk.
Rice Flour: Finely milled rice gives certain dosa and idli batter variations their character and shows up in a few chutney or batter-thickening steps too. It has nothing in common with wheat flour's behavior, so it can't substitute directly inside a gluten-based dough.
Sabudana (Sago / Tapioca Pearls): Processed from tapioca root into small starch pearls, sabudana forms the base of sabudana vada and gets heavy use during religious fasting periods precisely because it contains no grain at all. Hydrating it correctly means soaking it, not boiling it.
Sev: Pushed through a perforated press into thin strands and then fried, this seasoned gram-flour batter turns crisp enough to eat on its own as a snack, though it's just as often used as the crunchy finish on bhel puri and sev puri.
Tadka / Tempering: A short fry of whole spices, and often aromatics alongside them, in hot oil or ghee pulls their flavor out before the whole thing gets stirred into a dish that's finished or nearly there. The library's dedicated technique guide walks through the full process.
Urad Dal (Split Black Gram): Soaked and ground, this dense, starchy pulse is what gives idli and dosa batter their characteristic rise and what holds medu vada together structurally. The whole version and the split, skinned version behave differently enough that one shouldn't be swapped in for the other.