Home-Made Spices - Multi-Purpose Spice Powder

A multipurpose spice powder that can be used as your sambar/rasam powder as well as the curry-powder to spice up all your cuisines. I prepare my Rasam, Sambar, and all my vegetable curries or even breakfast dishes often using this spice powder.


Preparing this powder is very simple by grinding only 4 types of spice-ingredients and a bit of lentil in a mixer-grinder.

Ingredients Required for Rasam-Cum-Curry Powder

1. Black Pepper 50 grams

2. Cumin seeds  50 grams

3. Coriander seeds 50 grams

4. Red Chili (dry) 20 to 25 nos.

5. Yellow Pigeon split lentil 75 grams

Step-by-Step Preparation of Home-Made Spice Powder

Step 1: If you are able to dry all these ingredients in the hot sun-light for some hours, it is well and good. Otherwise, you need to dry them in a hot pan. For this purpose, light your stove and place a deep frying pan on it. After it gets heated, decrease the flame to the minimum level and heat the ingredients one-by-one. You only need to get them dry so that they can be ground into a powder. After each one gets heated, remove it into a large plate. And, follow the same procedure until all ingredients are done with. Pour all the heated ingredients into the same plate. The lentil may take some extra time. But everything gets done within 5 minutes.

Step 2: Cool the hot ingredients for some time so that they become warm enough to be ground. They may cool down within 10 to 15 minutes. Touch them with your hand and ensure that when you put them in a grinding jar, the jar will not get warm and hot.

Step 3: Now, put those ingredients in the jar and grind them to powder. But, do not make the powder too soft. It should be a dry free-flowing powder so as to enjoy the spiciness of your dish.

Step 4: Remove the powder from the grinder into a bowl and allow it to cool. Or, you may let it cool in the grinder itself for some time, stirring it with a spoon 2, 3 times with intervals. After it gets cooled, transfer the powder into any tight-lid container and use it as and when required with a spoon.

How To Use This Multi-Purpose Powder

1. If you are preparing the Rasam dish (a kind of liquid taken with food for better digestion purposes), you need to simply add this powder as it is according to your requirements along with a small quantity of tamarind, salt, and turmeric in a bowl of water and bring it to the boiling point.

2. For preparing other vegetable curries, breakfast dishes like Upma, Oats, and even meat dishes, you need to fry this powder in some cooking oil along with the other ingredients that you may be adding before cooking the recipes.

I hope you will enjoy the taste of any food prepared with this spice-powder just like me.