Nowadays, I think, spice mixture for every single dish is available in the market. As a result we gradually became lazy to use fresh ground spices or their pastes in our dishes. I can recall my grandmother always keep a ‘shil nora’ or ‘sil batta’ by her side when she started cooking daily. Whenever a spice was needed to add, either it is cumin or coriander or red chilli and what not, she used to grind it in the ‘shil nora’ with a little water. The fresh unadulterated fragrance of spices was not to be compared with the ready made powdered spices, we use these days. Those ages were gone into oblivion and so the flavours turned artificial in our food.

However a special dish always demands a special attention. Nihari is among those special dishes which deserve home made masala. That’s why I put an extra effort to make Nihari Masala at home. While grinding, I could assume something special is going to happen and it did. Therefore whenever you are in a mood to prepare Nihari, use homemade Nihari Masala. It is the soul of the dish.   

Obviously you can guess my next post will be on the traditional Mughlai dish ‘Nihari’ 😀

Ingredients (for 500 gm. meat) :

Whole spices

1. Fennel seed (saunf) – 1 teaspoon
2. Caraway seed (sajeera) – ½ teaspoon
3. Bay leaf (tejpatta) – 1 no.
4. Cinnamon stick (dalchini) – 1 inch piece
5. Black cardamom (bara elaichi) – 1 no.
6. Green cardamom (chota elaichi) – 3 nos.
7. Cloves (laung)  – 4 nos.
8. Nutmeg (jayfal) – ½ of a piece
9. Mace (javitri) – 1 small piece.
10. Black pepper (kali mirch) – 10 nos.
11. Star anise – ½ of a piece
12. Kabab chini – 5 nos.

Ground spices

1. Coriander powder – 1 teaspoon
2. Red chilli powder – 1 teaspoon  
3. Kashmiri red chilli powder – 1 teaspoon (for colour)
4. Dry ginger powder – 1 teaspoon
5. Turmeric powder – ½ teaspoon

Procedure :

• First, transfer all the whole spices in a blender and grind them to a fine powder.
• Pour the ground spices in a blow and then add above listed spice powders to it.
• Now mix all the ingredients very well with the help of a spoon.
• Nihari masala is ready to use.

Note :

1. One can also add long pepper or ‘pipli’ in the list of whole spices. Use just 1-2 in this proportion of spices. I didn’t get it at nearby shops, so I had to skip this spice.
2. There is no need to dry roast the whole spices before grinding.