I am so glad you guys enjoyed the recipe Hema 🙂

Thanks Guys, Your Recipe Was Too Fantastic. Me and My Family Loved it. I Will definitely Share your Rrecipe with my friends.

Haha Thank you! I really appreciate the feedback 🙂 It is really wonderful to see people who are passionate about south Indian food as I am 🙂

The sambar is now made in so many ways that we will be soon running out of names for each variation.

Indian recipes go beyond being merely a step by step guide to making a dish. They are embedded with nuggets of cultural information on how seriously our ancestors took the business of eating. And how they came up with dishes that went beyond the palate, to nourish the body and touch the soul.

Recipes therefore become the vehicles that carry this information to the new generations.

I am no expert cook. My expertise begins ( and ends ) at the dining table.
It is perhaps the memories of my childhood chores in the kitchen, that triggered my observation.

In fact, i tried out the sambar powder in your recipe and made a one-pot sambar-rice in the pressure cooker. It was smashing! The aroma was out of the world! Thank you.

My apologies again if i sounded critical or offensive. Wholly unintended.
And that is the ‘Arachu vitta’ truth!😆

Thank you so much on your insights on sambar.. Yes arachuvittu contains cococnut and it is perfect with rice..But since we are grinding the fresh spices to flavor the sambar I used the term arachuvittu. I also wanted to give the readers an option to make sambar without coconut 🙂 I have grown up eating arachuvitta sambar with coconut in my house.. My mother, my grandmom, everyone makes it and we love it. But my mom also makes this version once in a while and we call it arachuvitta sambar too. Guess different families have different terms that we like to use. In fact my hubby’s family calls just podi pota kuzhambu as sambar, whereas we call it paruppu kuzhambu. That said, thank you so much on your thoughts on this post sir.. I see that you are passionate about the topic and I really appreciate it. I hope you understand that my intention was not to dupe anyone..

2. ‘ Araichu Vitta ‘ connotes the method of using a wet-paste of spices, and the complete absence of powders.
( Araichu = ground; Vitta = poured )

The use of coconut , is also an integral part of the preparation and NOT an option. This wet-paste method imparts a completely different flavour and texture to the sambar, and those who have tried it once, and have access to coconut ( the actual one and NOT its tinned, dessicated versions ) will prefer it over the versions that use the powder.

3. In fact this was the actual original way followed by our grandmothers in the times before the advent of the blending/powdering machines. I speak from my childhood experience of manually grinding this ‘SPICE PASTE’ everyday for my mother on a stone mortar and pestle . It was no doubt a more labourious / time-consuming process, but Indian Cooking always went beyond being a gastronomic chore. It was always a labour of LOVE!

4. The way our grandmothers went about it, is as follows. The spices used in the recipe ( chiefly coriander, red chilli, Fenugreek, gram dhall/ urad) are roasted in vegetable oil on moderate heat, till they attain a golden hue and exude a pleasant aroma. This is the KEY PART of the whole recipe, and decides the final flavour of the Sambar. Over-roasting can be disastrous. After the spice-mix cools down, it is ground (in a blender these days ) along with the freshly shredded coconut. After the first few runs to homogenize the hard spices with the soft coconut, the grinding continues with table spoons of water added at intervals, till a beautiful orange-red paste is obtained. Here again a slightly coarse paste is preferred to a very smooth, runny, saucy fluid.
This is the WET MASALA PASTE which gives the prefix ‘ Araichu Vitta’ to the Sambar.

5. I have often wondered how this difference in processing of the same spice-set, can change the flavour / texture so much. I think the first is the liberal use of fresh coconut (first ground to release its water, and then boiled to release its oils.)
Secondly it is roasting of the spices in oil. The oil has a way of taking up the heat and uniformly coating the spices, and transferring the heat, thereby making a uniform roast. More importantly, oil has a way of ABSORBING the flavours of the roasting spices and releasing it later on, into the sambar.

In dry roasting, these wonderful flavour of the spices, whose originally intended destination is our nostrils, are in danger of wafting off into the atmosphere!

6. Finally, sambar has numerous avatars across South India. The AV version is thicker and more fibrous ( courtesy the coconut ). It is generally part of the regular full-course meal where it goes well with the rice.

The powder versions generally go well with the tiffins like Idli or Dosa where, a thinner consistency is more suitable. The powder versions also lend themselves to experimentation with the spice mix- like say the addition of garlic or fennel or pepper etc. In all its variations, the sambar is the King of the South Indian Cuisine, scoring on all nutritional parameters as well.