Indian Recipes
Rasam Powder
A home-roasted South Indian spice blend of coriander, cumin, black pepper, chillies and curry leaves: the base of a good rasam.
- Serves 1
- Ready in 15 min
- Makes about 120 g
- Indian
Method
Put a heavy frying pan over a low heat. Dry-roast the chana dal for 3–4 minutes, stirring, until golden. Tip on to a plate.
In the same dry pan, roast the coriander seeds, cumin seeds and peppercorns for 2–3 minutes until fragrant and a shade darker. Add the chillies and curry leaves and roast for 1–2 minutes more, until the leaves are crisp. Do not let anything burn.
Spread everything out to cool completely, then grind to a fine powder in a spice grinder with the turmeric. Store in an airtight jar.
Tip: tap a step to tick it off as you cook.
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Chef’s notes
- Keeps its flavour for about 2 months in an airtight jar away from light.
- Many South Indian cooks add 1 teaspoon of fenugreek seeds and use toor dal instead of chana dal; both are available from Indian grocers.
- Use 1–2 teaspoons for a pot of rasam serving 4.
How this recipe was developed
The old Cookeryonline page reproduced a published recipe, so we wrote a new one. We followed the standard home recipe for rasam powder, using chana dal, which is easier to buy in the UK than toor dal.
- Roast one by one. Swasthi Shreekanth dry-roasts each ingredient separately on a low to medium heat, without oil, then grinds them when cool.
- Chana dal and curry leaves. She lists chana dal, roasted curry leaves and turmeric among the usual additions to the basic pepper, cumin, coriander and chilli blend.
Sources we compared (ratings as shown on each site on 31 October 2026):
This is an original Cookeryonline recipe written in our own words. Ingredient choices and techniques are credited above; no source text has been copied.