Kinds of cardamom and their uses

[Suvir Saran]

Green or white?

Or do you use the large woody brown ones?

Does it make a difference as to what you may use?  

How do you decide which one you use in a recipe?

[yvonne johnson]

I've most practice at using the green, but I think I've used the white also. Never used the bigger, brown ones. BUT, now that Sandra Levine and I successfully bartered Mrs. Balbir Singh's Indian Cookery (as I ended up with two) on my part for a jar of brown cardamoms (given to me), I'm going to use them in a curry. Sandra and I have an idea of us both making (independently) the same dish from MBS's book and reporting back.

[Sandra Levine]

Generally, I use green for desserts and lighter dishes and save the brown for meat.

[Suvir Saran]

Sandra I might have to believe you are Indian.  You do what Indians do.  We use the brown ones for savory dishes and the green ones for desserts and some pilafs and savory dishes.

Also in desserts we normally grind the seeds into a very fine powder and sprinkle it at the very end.  If we use the pods whole, they are added to the syrup as it cooks to flavor the syrup with a depth of cardamom flavor.

The white ones have the same flavor as the green.  They have more of an aesthetic value.  Since at many mughal banquets meals were planned around colors.  So for those white sauces it would be wrong to use green cardamom seeds.  So bleached green ones were used instead.

And shall I be the taste tester for each of your Balbir Singh recipe???  What a great idea.  While her books are not the easiest to read, I have heard from my mother and several of her peer that Mrs. Singh was a genius.

[Sandra Levine]

Thank you for the compliment.  I do love Indian food, as I know it.  I regret that I have not actually been to India.

If you are tasting, it might be better for each of us to prepare a different dish -- to test the book, in other words, rather than turn the tasting into a cooking competition!

In flipping through Mrs. Singh's book, I saw that she has a recipe for ras malai, my favorite Indian dessert. It appears to

be quite an undertaking, and far more calorific than I realized. (My capacity for self-delusion is unlimited.)  I plan to make the ras malai one day, to see what they are really supposed to be like.

[Suvir Saran]

I did not mean to taste for comparison.. just for my own greed.  Sorry if it came out that way. Let me know if you make the ras malais.

What do you use cardamom seeds for?  What is your favorite use of them?

[cabrales]

I was surprised that cardamon goes arguably with chocolate as well, under certain circumstances. Christian Constant, the French chocolatier (and not the chef at Violin d'Ingres), pairs cardamon with his little dark chocolates.  

[Sandra Levine]

One of my favorite uses is for the cheese filling for blintzes!

[Suvir Saran]

Chocolate and cardamom have been paired for some time now I am told.  In Europe cardamom has either had fans or found disdain.  Cardamom does  that to many.

Debauve and Gallais have chocolate with cardamom in their temple of choclate in Paris. It is my favorite chocolate shop in the world.  But what attitude they give.

Blintzes with Cheese filling with cardamom... Wow!  Sandra.. how do you make these???  Where did y ou get this inspiration? recipe? care to share?

[Sandra Levine]

I wish I could take credit, but the idea for the cardamom came from The Vegetarian Epicure by Anna Thomas.  This book was recently updated and revised and I don't know if the blintz recipe survived.  It's a basic blintz filling, using a pound of Hoop cheese (I often use farmer cheese, as Hoop cheese is not as readily available.  I enrich it with some cream cheese.)

I add a little lemon juice and sugar to taste, a couple of eggs, cinnamon and some pounded cardamom seeds (to taste).  I put the filling into crepes, roll up (folding in the filling on all sides, and usually bake them in a well-butered pan, after anointing the tops with melted butter as well, rather than frying them, because I like to pretend that baking is less fattening than frying.  This amount of filling makes enough to fill 12 crepes.

[Suvir Saran]

Thanks for the recipe.  It sounds great.  Credit surely goes to you for introducing me to these.  Thanks.

[stellabella]

a chocolate & cardamom combo sounds very appealing to me

what about adding a dash of feshly ground cardamom to coffee as it is brewing?  mmmmmm.....

i did not realize there were varieties.  ai.  the cardamom seeds i have are brown and look like mouse droppings.  and i shopped at  atalanta's largest indian grocery.  next time in i will inquire about different types.

[Suvir Saran]

Yes people have been known to add cardamom seed powder to their coffee.

In India we use brown cardamom seeds more for savory dishes alone.  They are more intense in their flavor and also give a very woody and deep taste.

The green or white ones are used for desserts and certain savory dishes.

I am sure the market you go to in ATlanta has all of them.

[Monica Bhide]

I use the green ones for desserts or biryani's etc. I like to use the large black ones, that are really strong, for meats and chickpeas. In fact a pakistani friend showed me how to make a Murg Chana Masala or chicken chickpea masala.. that uses the black cardamom for the predominant flavor. It is a delicious dish -- I had not put the two together in Indian spices before... done some Moroccon cooking with them together

[torakris]

Green are the only ones that are readily accessible to me.

I did see the white ones at Penzeys.com but they were quite expensive and I wasn't sure what to do with them.

Black? I have heard of it but never seen it.

[Simon Majumdar]

As with Monica, I love green ones in desserts such as rabri and also in a spicy lassi.

I use the black ones in meatier dishes or some of the dhals I make. I also like to use them in tarkas ( my absolute favourite is to fry bulb chillies, nigella seed, black pods and fennel seeds in ghee) and pour that over dhals or even mix it into a raita of mint and cucumber.

At the weekend we had a meal of lobster and crab and afterwards my mother made the most spectacular indian soup using the shells. She fried off some spices ( a cinnamon stick, chilli powder, turmeric and cumin ) with a lot of black pods and added the lobster and crab shells with a load of chopped ripe tomatoes. She then added two pints of water and cooked on a low heat for 7 hrs. After straining, she added potatoes and chunks of oily fish. The complexity of taste was amazing and the black pods made such a difference

S

[Adam Balic]

I have a jar of the large woody black type, should they have a very strong smokey smell or is this artifact of their processing?

[Simon Majumdar]

I have never noticed a smokey smell or taste. It depends on how they have been processed or indeed kept.

Oh, and the make a wonderful reviving hangover tea when ground and mixed with assam leaves

S

[Vanessa]

As with Monica, I love green ones in desserts such as rabri and also in a spicy lassi.

I use the black ones in meatier dishes or some of the dhals I make.  I also like to use them in tarkas ( my absolute favourite is to fry bulb chillies, nigella seed, black pods and fennel seeds in ghee) and pour that over dhals or even mix it into a raita of mint and cucumber.

At the weekend we had a meal of lobster and crab and afterwards my mother made the most spectacular indian soup using the shells.  She fried off some spices ( a cinnamon stick, chilli powder, turmeric and cumin ) with a lot of black pods and added the lobster and crab shells with a load of chopped ripe tomatoes.  She then added two pints of water and cooked on a low heat for 7 hrs.  After straining, she added potatoes and chunks of oily fish.  The complexity of taste was amazing and the black pods made such a difference

S

Is it that lunch time is looming? That description sounds wonderful.

I always thought that white cardamom seeds were just a bleached version of the green ones and therefore to be avoided.

v

[Monica Bhide]

As with Monica, I love green ones in desserts such as rabri and also in a spicy lassi.

I use the black ones in meatier dishes or some of the dhals I make.  I also like to use them in tarkas ( my absolute favourite is to fry bulb chillies, nigella seed, black pods and fennel seeds in ghee) and pour that over dhals or even mix it into a raita of mint and cucumber.

At the weekend we had a meal of lobster and crab and afterwards my mother made the most spectacular indian soup using the shells.  She fried off some spices ( a cinnamon stick, chilli powder, turmeric and cumin ) with a lot of black pods and added the lobster and crab shells with a load of chopped ripe tomatoes.  She then added two pints of water and cooked on a low heat for 7 hrs.  After straining, she added potatoes and chunks of oily fish.  The complexity of taste was amazing and the black pods made such a difference

S

That soup sounds really really good. Yum

[Suvir Saran]

As with Monica, I love green ones in desserts such as rabri and also in a spicy lassi.

I use the black ones in meatier dishes or some of the dhals I make.  I also like to use them in tarkas ( my absolute favourite is to fry bulb chillies, nigella seed, black pods and fennel seeds in ghee) and pour that over dhals or even mix it into a raita of mint and cucumber.

At the weekend we had a meal of lobster and crab and afterwards my mother made the most spectacular indian soup using the shells.  She fried off some spices ( a cinnamon stick, chilli powder, turmeric and cumin ) with a lot of black pods and added the lobster and crab shells with a load of chopped ripe tomatoes.  She then added two pints of water and cooked on a low heat for 7 hrs.  After straining, she added potatoes and chunks of oily fish.  The complexity of taste was amazing and the black pods made such a difference

S

Is it that lunch time is looming? That description sounds wonderful.

I always thought that white cardamom seeds were just a bleached version of the green ones and therefore to be avoided.

v

Bleached they are... But not with chemical bleach. While they are still tender and green, they are washed in brine and dried in the blazing Indian sun. It turns them white.

There is no difference in flavor between the green and white.

[torakris]

If the white ones are "bleached" green ones, then what are the black ones?

[Suvir Saran]

If the white ones are "bleached" green ones, then what are the black ones?

A total different animal.

[Suvir Saran]

If the white ones are "bleached" green ones, then what are the black ones?

Black cardamom is a woody cardamom that is much larger than you usual cardamom pod. It is also another type of plant but called the same name. The flavor is more camphor like in black cardamom and it is used in savory dishes more often.

[Suvir Saran]

About Cardamom