Tempering is a cooking technique used inIndia,Bangladesh,Nepal,Pakistan, andSri Lanka in which wholespices (and sometimes also other ingredients such as dried chillies, mincedginger root or sugar) are cooked briefly in oil orghee to liberate essential oils from cells and thus enhance their flavours, before being poured, together with the oil, into a dish.[1] Tempering is also practiced by dry-roasting whole spices in a pan before grinding the spices. Tempering is typically done at the beginning of cooking, before adding the other ingredients for acurry or similar dish, or it may be added to a dish at the end of cooking, just before serving (as with adal,sambar orstew).[2]
Ingredients typically used in tempering includecumin seeds,black mustardseeds,fennel seeds,kalonji (nigella seeds), fresh greenchilis, dried red chilis,fenugreek seeds,asafoetida,cassia,cloves,urad dal,curry leaves, choppedonion,garlic, ortejpat leaves. When using multiple ingredients in tempering, they are often added in succession, with those requiring longer cooking added earlier, and those requiring less cooking added later. InOriya cuisine andBengali cuisine, mixtures of whole spices calledpancha phutaṇa orpanch phoron, respectively, are used for this purpose.[3]
SomeIndo-Aryan andDravidian languages use a form inherited (through an early borrowing, in the case of Kannada) from the Sanskrit rootvyághāra- "sprinkling over":
Some Indo-Aryan languages use a form inherited from the Sanskrit rootsphōṭana- "crackling, cracking":
Some Indo-Aryan languages use a form inherited from the Sanskrit roottraṭatkāra- "crackles, splits, fizzes":
Another root beginning with an aspirated affricate is found in yet other Indo-Aryan languages:
Dravidian languages also have various other forms for the same usage:
Sino-tibetan languages have many distinct terms, such as in:
InArabic, there are several cooking techniques that involve or consist of tempering spices, such asfalfaleh (فلفلة),[8] rice cooked in this manner is calledruz imfalfal,[9] as well asadha orqadha (Arabic:قدحة) inLevantine Arabic (literally meaning "pouring"), ortasha (Arabic:طشة) inEgyptian Arabic.[10][11][12]
And other languages use roots that developed fromonomatopoeia:
