10+ Kerala Sadya Tips

It’s a tedious process to make traditional Kerala sadya. Through this column I shall provide some of the easy and simplified Sadya tips to make your dishes easy, serve better and taste it the best too. And here we go!

1. The banana leaf will be filled with so many tasty dishes, and you get the exact taste of each dish, taste a little Olan. If so the taste of previous tasted curry will go from taste buds.

2. In mid-Kerala, cooked Kerala banana is an integral part of Onam season. Never throw away the water used for cooking banana. It’s abundant in Vitamins and can be used to cook the pieces for Pulissery.

3. Before adding black pepper powder to your sadya dishes, mix it with a little water. Stir well and allow to rest for a while. The black coloured pepper skin floats on the surface of water. Remove it. If so, your dish won’t get the black colour shades of pepper. 

4. After Karkidakam when Chingam arrives, new elephant yams sprout out. Choose yams of this season for preparing Onam sadya. Also buy only local long beans (naadan achinga) to prepare mezhukku puratti dishes.

5. Never use traditional iron pans (Kadai/Cheena chatti) to prepare mezhukku puratti dishes. Elephant Yam mezhukku puratti turns black. Same is the case of frying ginger for Puli Inji. Iron elements will be added to ginger and it turns darker after preparation.

6. While boiling tamarind juice for sambar and puli inji, add a small spoon of coconut oil to it. It reduces the natural acid nature and taste of tamarind. 

7. It takes extra time to fry coriander seeds for sambar. Always use low flame and fry continuously while doing so. Add a few curry leaves to it. When curry leaves are well fried, coriander is done and fried perfect.

8. Instead of adding cooked dal (pigeon pea/sambar paripp) to rasam, it’s always a better choice to add water only (in which dal is cooked). After cooking dal for sambar, you can extract a little dal for this purpose. You can also add a little ghee while boiling rasam to enhance taste.

9. Kerala banana used to prepare Pazham Pradhaman should be well-ripen with black marks on its skin. So it’s always better to buy them one week earlier and allow them to ripen well.

10. While preparing pradhaman, after adding first milk, never allow to boil.

11. While cooking vegetable pieces for avial and koottu curry, add a little coconut oil along with turmeric powder. Pieces won’t burn by sticking on the bottom of the pan.

12. When you wrap batter in banana leaf and boil in water to prepare palada, wait till colour of leaf changes and adas go immersed in water. Then only adas will be well cooked.

13. If your sambar turned extra sour, add one piece of jaggery and boil well. Thus you can adjust sour taste.

14. When you prepare curd for Kaalan, boil milk for a long time till it thickens. Add thick curd to Kaalan during preparation; never add water.

15. When you prepare sweet pachadi, add raisins only after putting the flame off. Otherwise raisins will be overcooked and smashed.

Want to know how to enhance and improve the taste of some of the common dishes? Here is the page link. Click on the images in the gallery to read