Ingredient

Tamarind

Tamarind is the pulp of a large brown pod, and it is sour in a way nothing else quite is — deep, fruity, faintly sweet, with a raisin-and-date quality behind the acidity. It is used across South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, the Caribbean and Latin America, and it is in Worcestershire sauce and brown sauce, which is why so many British palates find it oddly familiar.

The three forms, and they are not interchangeable

This is where most tamarind recipes go wrong, because they rarely say which one they mean.

Block or slab

Compressed pulp with seeds and fibre in it. The best flavour and the most work — you soak it in hot water, squash it, and strain out the solids. What most Indian and Southeast Asian recipes assume.

Concentrate

Thick, very dark, almost black, sold in jars. Intensely sour and often slightly cooked-tasting. Much stronger than the liquid you make from a block, and using it one-for-one will overwhelm a dish.

Paste or purée

Somewhere between the two, ready to use, seedless. Convenient. Strength varies enormously between brands, so taste before committing.

Practical rule

Whatever the recipe says, taste it. If you are substituting concentrate for block-water, start with a fraction of the quantity and build up.

Making tamarind water from a block

Worth doing at least once — the flavour is noticeably better and fresher.

1. Break off a piece of the block, roughly the size the recipe implies.
2. Cover it with hot water — about four times its volume — and leave for fifteen to twenty minutes.
3. Squash it thoroughly with your fingers or a spoon. The pulp should dissolve into the water, leaving seeds, fibre and skin behind.
4. Push the lot through a sieve, pressing hard, and scrape the underside of the sieve. Discard the solids.
5. You now have tamarind water. Taste it — the strength depends on how much water you used, and you can reduce it or dilute it from here.
6. It freezes well in an ice cube tray, which turns an occasional faff into a convenience.

What it is used in

• Pad thai, where tamarind is the sour element and the reason the sauce is not simply sweet and salty.
• Sambar, rasam and South Indian curries, where it is the primary souring agent rather than lemon or vinegar.
• Chutneys — tamarind and date chutney is the sweet-sour one served with samosas and chaat.
• Asam laksa and Malaysian and Indonesian sour dishes.
• Worcestershire sauce and brown sauce, both of which contain it, which is why tamarind tastes half-familiar to British cooks.
• Agua de tamarindo, the Mexican drink, and tamarind sweets across Latin America.
• Marinades and glazes, where its acid and sugar both help.
• In place of lemon or vinegar in any dish that would suit a deeper, fruitier sourness — a lentil soup, a braise, a barbecue sauce.

What it is, and what it tastes of

Tamarind grows in long brown pods on a large tropical tree, native to Africa and cultivated across South and Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America for a very long time. Inside the brittle shell is a sticky brown pulp wrapped around several hard, shiny seeds, and that pulp is the ingredient.

The flavour is sour first and unmistakably fruity behind it — dates, raisins and prunes are the usual comparisons, and they are fair. There is a faint sweetness underneath, and a slight tannic quality that gives it more body than a citrus acid has.

That combination is why it is so widely used. Lemon and vinegar supply acidity and very little else; tamarind supplies acidity, sweetness and depth in one move, which is why it can carry a sauce rather than merely sharpen one. Sweet tamarind varieties are eaten as fruit straight from the pod, and are noticeably less sour than the cooking kind.

Common questions