Namak - Svaad ke Anusaar

Leading a bachelor life is an adventure, especially if you don’t know the amount of salt to be put in the food while cooking. I always feel mesmerized when my mom adds salt with bare hands. Be it the breakfast or lunch, vegetarian or non-vegetarian, small or big occasion, she just takes the salt with her hand or spoon, just takes a look at it and adds. It has worked countless number of times. It’s very rare that she miscalculates it. The same goes with the other ingredients too—spices, chilli powder, seasonings, etc. How she’s able to do it? Only she knows.

A year and half ago, me and my friends started living in Hyderabad as roommates. Though we used to buy curries from the curry points, we thought of doing some experiments in cooking. We started with fried rice. Nobody among us knows cooking. So, we took the help of Youtube, as everybody does. Lots of channels are in the air for us to learn cooking. We carefully noted down the amount of ingredients to be put in and watched the procedure. When we started cooking, everything seemed fine until we reached a point where we needed to add salt. But everybody, be it Sanjeev Kapoor (Sanjeev Kapoor’s Khazana) or Kabita (Kabita’s Kitchen), mentioned the same thing, namak-svaad ke anusar (salt: add as per your taste). They leave the taste to the whims of the person who does the cooking. What about the guys like us who only know how to taste salt but not how much to add? What about the rookies at cooking? They did not show us any mercy.  If we add more, we cannot eat what we cooked. If we add less, we have to add it again and mix thoroughly which consumes extra time and effort. After a small round table conference, we added some amount which turned out to be very less, and somehow managed it later by repeatedly adding salt for two to three times—an adventure.

For few days, we watched more videos on more recipes such as upma, poha, chicken, lemon rice, etc. We used to hate that part of the video when the phrase ‘salt-as per your taste’ cropped up in the recipe. We hated the line ‘namak-svaad ke anusar.’ We thought that adding salt is a pre-requisite to learn cooking.

But as the days passed on, with more experiments, we got more experience. Our courage to add salt as per taste started to improve with time. That phrase did not haunt us anymore. Maybe, that’s what the chefs’ intention is—get more experience to add the right amount of salt. Vijay Devarakonda is absolutely right in saying, ‘cooking is an art form.’ The way we cut vegetables, add them to the wok, sprinkle the spices and mix the ingredients are all art forms. For me, adding salt is also an art. It gets better and better as we cook more. Even though salt is the cheapest of all the ingredients, it gives us the taste and thus shines bright among them.

We used to get happier when the experiments conducted by us created smiles on our faces while we eat. Good food transforms our mood which plays a great role in the work we do. So, salt not only ads taste to the food, but also to our lives. Hail Salt!!!