Bottled Tadka : Infused Oil !

OPOS - The 'Lazy' Technique ?
Quite a few people equate effortless with lazy. And feel good only when they have slogged.

OPOS is all about minimising manual labour, without ANY compromise in flavour or nutrition. Infact, the flavour / nutrition of most OPOS recipes are better than their traditional counterparts.

Let's take the bottled tadka encouraged in OPOS. Many people see it as a boon. And many see it as a lazy technique.
Fresh tadka takes a few seconds. Why on earth would you want to use bottled tadka ?

Two reasons -
One, it is a matter of personal choice.
And two, bottled tadka is more flavourful.

Indian cuisine discovered that when spices are fried in oil, the oil gets infused with their flavours. What it ignored is the fact that the longer the spices are steeped in oil, the more flavourful the oil becomes. India had a dread of stored food and so missed out on infused oils, common in other cuisines. This fear of stored food has prevented it from adopting bottled tadka all along.

A bottled tadka is much more rounded and flavourful than fresh tadka. A fresh tadka flavours the room, but for flavouring food, bottled tadka wins hands down.

You might be missing out on the sizzle when fresh tadka hits food, and the burst of flavour that fills the room when fresh tadka is made, but from a flavour point of view, bottled is better than fresh. In fresh tadka, the spices just do not have enough time to release all their flavour into oil in a few seconds.

Just because something is easy and convenient, it need not always be lazy ! Bottled tadka is nothing but infused oil, a technique other cuisines have been practicing for ages ! Those cuisines missed out on the frying part and we missed out on the steeping part. With bottled tadka, we can have the best of both worlds !