5 Instant Spices to Spice up Your Meals

By Ruchi Sharma

Love for restaurant food is something we all have in common. The craving for that perfect Kadhai Paneer or Fried Rice is one thing that drags all of us to our favourite food joints. But the past few months have raised doubts over the safety of dining out and that has put a halt to the food adventures for many of us. Though most of us new cooks have learnt to make good enough food following basic recipes, we are still nowhere close to getting that perfect restaurant-like taste in our food! The only perfect food we cook at home is Maggi! That too because we don’t experiment much with it. But no more issues because in the last few weeks we came across a bunch of instant spices that claim to give us the feel of restaurant style food with minimum cooking. We tried a few ourselves and handpicked these five spices which we feel are quite close in achieving restaurant-like taste at home. All one needs to do is follow the instructions of the pack (just like we do for making Maggi!), and we get good flavourful food. 

1. Maggi Fried Rice Masala-Classic Veg

There are two varieties of this masala available in the market - Classic Veg Fried Rice Masala and Chilli Garlic Fried Rice Masala. We loved the former one. It requires you to just stir fry veggies of your choice, add some boiled rice and toss them in the masala and cook it. And you get awesome tasting fried rice. We found it a mix between street style fried rice and restaurant style fried rice but the taste was really good! A perfect snack to satisfy those taste buds craving some desi Chinese food. Another cool thing about this mix is that a pack of masala consists of 5 individual packs, so no worries of handling the rest of the masala or measuring spoons. Just read the measurements of the packet and you get close to perfect results in the first go itself.

2. Wingreens Farms Smoked Tandoori All-in-One Spice Mix

Who doesn’t love a good tandoori paneer? It’s one of the most ordered appetizers and a perfect snack for anytime, the only glitch is that the flavours are quite difficult to perfect at home. This masala solves that problem as it is quite tasty and has the nice smoked tandoori flavour. The pack says it could be used to make either tandoori chicken or paneer, we tried the paneer and it turned out quite well. Just requires you to marinate the paneer pieces, some veggies (like capsicum, tomato and onion) in oil, ginger garlic paste and the masala. You can either shallow fry it or bake it in the oven. Just the quantity of the masala being used varies a bit for each person’s palate, so be a little careful on that front.

3. MTR Spice Puliyogare Powder

The spicy tangy tamarind rice is a real delicacy. It’s a divine lunch in itself with some coconut chutney on the side. This masala again requires minimum preparation, all one needs to do is add some oil and spice powder in the pan, sauté it and then add the cooked rice. The tamarind rice mix is ready. The flavors are quite good and there are even noticeable bits of peanuts in the masala itself which bring a nice crunchy twist. We really loved the flavours even though they didn’t really match perfectly with the authentic Tamarind Rice.

4. Keya Tandoori Pasta Meal Kit

Now, the first reason why we selected this to be in the list is the complete package that is offered. As the name suggests, it’s really a meal kit consisting of a packet of durum wheat pasta, a bottle of tandoori pasta sauce and oregano seasoning too! It says that the pack is enough for two. What’s lovely is the control you get over adjusting the seasoning or even the sauce. Though we suggest you do exactly as the instructions on the pack to get the best flavours. The flavour profile is really unique and we found it worth at least a try.

5. Maggi Paneer-ae-Magic Kadhai Paneer Masala

The craving to eat restaurant style Kadhai Paneer was quite satisfied by this spice. Super easy to make, one just needs to follow the 3 steps mentioned on the packet to achieve that restaurant style Kadhai Paneer. The flavour closely resembles hotel or restaurant food. It can be eaten with either roti or rice. A perfect lunch or dinner option that brings the delicious Kadhai Paneer right to your own kitchen. 

We hope some of the above spices list really help in satisfying your palate craving for some restaurant style food. With new spices coming up every day we hope to add quite a few masalas to our list. Got some suggestions, do feel free to share them with us. We would love to add them to our next list!