My Tamil mother-in-law, Amma, was a fantastic cook and one of the most divine foods she made was sambar, an aromatic south Indian lentil stew or dal. She stirred into it a whole lot of love and an aromatic spice mix called sambar podi (powder), which she made herself. My homemade sambar powder recipe, gleaned from years of watching over her shoulder, is both authentic and delicious, and it never fails to take me back to the wonderful times spent in her Chennai kitchen.
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Sambar powder: A quintessentially Tamilian spice blend
Sambar, a divine dal loaded with vegetables, sits at the center of Tamil home cooking, and sambar powder is the spice blend used to flavor it. This is a finely ground mix of two or three types of lentils, whole spices like cumin, coriander and red chili peppers, turmeric powder, and curry leaves. Like all spice mixes it is intensely aromatic and, like all spice mixes, it tastes best when made from scratch, with whole spices.
Tamil cuisine is replete with delicious dishes like ven pongal, upma, idli and dosa, but sambar is the food served alongside that makes all of these other foods even more delicious. Desi's always just a little more excited to eat when I make him sambar. By extension, sambar powder is a spice mix no Tamilian can do without. A jar of homemade sambar masala is an essential in a Tamil kitchen, and every cook has their own recipe. When young Tamilians travel overseas for education or work, there is always a bag of sambar masala, lovingly packed by mom, in their suitcases. It doesn't matter if they've never made a sambar before - they just have to cook the lentils and the sambar masala will add that magical taste of home.
Tamil cooks don't limit the use of sambar masala to sambar, and you don't have to either. It is delicious in dry vegetable curries, tomato rice and tomato dal. When you make it at home instead of buying it at the store you get many advantages: you know exactly what's in it, you are rewarded with a vividly aromatic spice blend that makes the dish taste so much better, and you can tweak the spice level to your liking. Best of all, like all spice mixes, it's so easy to make!
Recipe card
Sambar Powder (Sambar Masala)
Ingredients
- 1¼ cups coriander seeds
- 1 cup dry red chili peppers (like Kashmiri red chili peppers or byadgi peppers, loosely packed. Use moderately hot peppers. This sambar masala is not too hot but if you are very sensitive to heat you can cut down the quantity of peppers by half)
- ⅓ cup chana dal (Bengal gram dal)
- ⅓ cup toor dal (split pigeon peas)
- 2 tablespoons urad dal (black gram dal, optional)
- 2 tablespoons cumin seeds
- 1 tablespoon fenugreek seeds or methi seeds (methi dana)
- 1 tablespoon black peppercorns
- ¼ cup curry leaves (fresh or dry are both fine. Some south Indians don't use curry leaves in their sambar powder and you can leave them out, but if you do that be sure to add fresh curry leaves to the sambar when you are making it.)
- 2 teaspoons turmeric
Instructions
Roast the ingredients
- Dry-roast the red chili peppers in a medium skillet over medium-low heat for about five minutes or until they turn almost crispy. Remove to a plate and set aside to cool.
- To the same skillet add the remaining ingredients except the turmeric and the curry leaves. Roast them over a low heat setting. Slow-roast the ingredients until they have slightly changed color and are very aromatic. This takes me about 10 minutes.
- Remove the roasted ingredients to a plate and set aside.
- Finally, roast the curry leaves, if they are fresh, until they are very dry and crisp. If you are using dried curry leaves you can skip this step.
Blend the sambar powder
- Once the ingredients have cooled you can start blending them. Begin by blending the chili peppers first. It really helps to have a powerful blender that can make a fine powder. Then add all of the remaining ingredients to the blender jar, including the roasted spices and lentils, turmeric and curry leaves, and blend into as fine a powder as possible.
Sift the sambar powder
- Use a sieve or strainer to sift the blended powder into a bowl.
Store the sambar powder
- Store the sambar powder in an airtight mason jar for up to a year in a cool, dark place, or, preferably, in a fridge, which will extend its life.
Notes
- Be sure to turn on your vent hood or vent fan or leave a window in the kitchen open any time you roast chili peppers.
- When roasting the ingredients, always use low heat. Traditionally sambar ingredients are put out to roast in the hot south Indian sun before being blended. To reproduce that indirect heat, keep your stove on a low setting so the spices toast gently but thoroughly.
- Sifting the ingredients is an optional step, but doing so will reward you with a silky, creamy sambar. Any coarse ingredients you sift out can be blended again and added to the sambar powder, or reserve them in a separate jar and use them to season stir-fried vegetables.
Nutrition Information
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Sambar powder FAQs
You can add sambar podi to any south Indian lentil stew, like onion sambar, cabbage kootu or bitter gourd pitlai. You can also use it to flavor rice, like this tomato rice, or in tomato chutney. If you need curry powder for a recipe but don't have it on hand, use sambar powder instead -- it has many similar flavors.
My sambar powder recipe is moderately spicy. To reduce the spiciness, cut down the amount of chili peppers from 1 cup to ½ cup. Use just six to seven chili peppers for a very mild sambar powder, and even less if you'll be feeding this to children.
I strongly recommend buying spices at an Indian grocery store, if you have access to one, because the prices are much better. However, if you don't have access to an Indian store, or would like to purchase only organic spices, you will need to look online. I have included Amazon affiliate links in the recipe card below.
For each cup of dry lentils I'd add between one to two tablespoons. If a sambar or dal recipe calls for a freshly blended masala paste of coriander seeds, dry red chilies, chana dal, cumin seeds and asafetida you can skip it and use the sambar powder instead.
Sambar powder should be added to the pan closer to the beginning of cooking, to the tamarind juice or along with other powdered spices.
Use the slider in the recipe card to adjust to the quantity you would like to make. The slider appears when you hover over the number of servings under the "print recipe" and "save recipe" buttons.
Store sambar powder in an airtight mason jar in a cool, dark place, or, preferably, in a fridge, which will extend its life. Stored properly, sambar powder can last a year or more.
jim says
Hello Vaishali,
First thank you for this inspiring food blog that is a lot of fun to read too, I can tell you were trained as a journalist you do your research and I learn from it. I wonder if it is possible to grind the beans in a coffee grinder since this is what I use to grind my spices. Probably not ideal but would it work, do you have ecperience doing so?
I'm a vegetarian for about 40 years now, love the Indian kitchen (and the Ethiopian btw) to bits. Such a variety of flavours and combinations and I love spicy food. (I can't rate the recipe since I didn't make it but I love Sambar and the south indian kitchen so will give it three stars only if required to be able to post a comment for now and hope you don't mind.) And hey, Spinach and mushrooms are a great combo I'll check the recipe out too! Loved your writing on the Vegetable Vindaloo and learned a thing or two. Glad I found your site! All the best.
Vaishali says
Hi Jim, it's best to have a dedicated spice grinder for spices and not use it for coffee as well, unless you like spice-flavored coffee! 🙂
Thanks for your kind words, I am so happy you liked the vindaloo post and others. Hope you make the sambar and if you do, would love to hear how it went!
SNL says
I only have 1 powerful coffee/spice grinder (whatever the name on the box said) and have used it for both coffee and spices. To clean out the smells, I wipe the grinder bowl with a good piece (thick) of kitchen roll (make sure you get all of the powder out) and then leave exposed overnight (I have no idea why it works but it becomes odourless). For the lid, as I can wash it, I do and again leave it out overnight to dry fully.
PamelaB says
I love this! The idea of adding to rice or lentils is such a great idea.
What about adding a bit while scrambling eggs…?
Or mashed potatoes or sweet potatoes…mashed squash?
Would it work as a dusting of flavor to sautéed greens…what do you think?
(I’m inclined to look/go outside the box)😏
Vaishali says
Hi Pamela, I love that you are looking outside the box! All of your suggestions are wonderful and I'd say go for it. I think the flavor would be especially wonderful with sweet potatoes and squash. It could also work with eggs but you might want to add some veggies to the scrambled eggs for balancing flavors.
You can also make a simple curry like this one using sauteed greens, mushrooms and coconut milk with sambar powder (instead of curry powder): https://holycowvegan.net/mushroom-spinach-curry/