Bitter gourd consumption helps your skin glow as it purifies the blood, It is a powerful antioxidant that prevents premature skin ageing and diminishes wrinkles. It reduces acne and skin conditions such as Psoriasis and protects skin from harmful UV rays. It maintains blood sugar level, cleanses liver, lowers bad cholesterol, helps in weight loss, boosts immune system and strengthens eye sight. Infact bitter gourd deserves a full blog on it’s own merit.
I am not a food blogger nor a foodie. For me cooking is a necessity more than passion. That leaves with a very handful of recipes in my repertoire.
Tangy Spicy Bitter gourd curry is one of the dishes that I cook now and then. I love bitter gourd as it is one of the healthiest fruit around. Bitter gourd is not a vegetable, but a fruit if you did not know.
But let me skip the intro now and show you how to make a tangy spicy bitter gourd curry that goes well with bread or rice.
This is an Indian dish, full of spices and quite tangy and hot too. I am sure you would love to try this spicy Indian curry someday. But for now, here we go.
Ingredients:
4 No. Medium size bitter gourd
2 Large Tomatoes & 2 large Onions
1 Table spoon of red chilli powder
Tamarind the size of a golf ball
1 tsp mustard and 1 tsp cumin and a pinch of asafoetida
Bay leaves
2 tablespoon of Coconut oil
Salt to taste
Directions:
Step 1:
Wash the bitter gourds and slice it to make rings.
Use a scissor to cut out the seed from the centre of the gourd rings so that you have a hole in the centre.
Step 2:
Put 3-4 table spoon of salt in a vessel and pour about 500 ML of water in it. Add the cut bitter gourd rings in to the vessel and leave it to marinate for about 1 hour. The salt water reduces the bitterness of the gourd and makes it delicious to taste.
Step 3:
Take a golf ball size tamarind in a small bowl and pour a cup of warm water over it. Warm water is better than cold water in extracting the juice from the tamarind. Keep it aside for some 30 minutes.
Step 4:
Take 2 medium size Tomato and 2 medium size Onions and chop it finely. Chopping fine makes the flavour of onion and tomato blend better with bitter gourd. Keep it aside.
Step 5:
After an hour of marinating bitter gourd, drain the salt water and place the bitter gourd rings in the cooker ( I use an electric rice cooker) and steam it. (steam it not steem it !!). It should be well done in about 15 minute’s time.
Step 6:
The tamarind juice would have been extracted from the pulp. Separate the pulp and keep the tamarind juice aside.
Step 7:
Place a cooking pot on the gas stove and add 2 tablespoon of coconut oil (you can use olive oil if you wish). Add 1 tbsp of mustard, 1 tbsp of cumin, bay leaves and a pinch of asafoetida and sauté for 1 minute.
Step 8:
Add the chopped onion to the pot and sauté it for another 2 minutes till the onion becomes transparent and soft.
Add 1 table spoon of red chilli powder. ( you can add sliced green chilli if you like, but while eating, if you happen to get a green chilli piece in your mouth, that can send you scurrying for water and leave you red faced. So chilli powder is better)
Sauté it for another 30 seconds.
Step 9:
Add the chopped tomato to the pot. And sauté it for another 2 minutes till the tomato bits become soft and mushy and blend totally with the onion.
Step 10:
Add the tamarind juice to the pot now. And immediately add the steamed bitter gourd rings to the pot. Sprinkle salt and let the curry cook in tamarind juice.
Step 11:
You need to cook it for at least 5 minutes, else the raw tamarind taste will be overwhelming when you eat. When you cook it on low flame for say 5-8 minutes, the tamarind juice matures and the flavour builds up and the raw taste of tamarind goes away.
Tangy Spicy Bitter Gourd Indian Style curry is ready:
Now the tangy tamarind, spicy chilli powder, bitter gourd, onion and tomato blends into one homogenous awesome curry. This curry is a thick gravy type with good chunks of tangy spicy bitter gourd rings that goes very well with bread or steamed rice ( the staple food in south India).
This is a very healthy as well as a tasty dish.
You can have this dish over a period of 2-3 days. Infact the flavour increases on the second or third day as all the ingredients blend into one another more as the time progresses. Of course don’t forget to keep it back in a refrigerator once you have taken your portion for your lunch or dinner.
I just prepared it today and thought I shall share this delicious and healthy recipe with you guys. Hope you enjoyed reading this blog as much as I enjoyed cooking my bitter gourd rings
I saw your post in my facebook group Seemit Community. I have decided to upvote it for its quality. Thanks for sharing! Your dish looks delicious, I'm a cook too :)
@stea90, Thank you very much for passing by. I appreciate your comment.
Looks good :)
love tasty food? https://steemit.com/new/@phoenix69/lithuanian-cuisine
@phoenix, Yup I love good food.
My friend, you can promote your blog on Facebook (there are quite a few steem related groups there).
Then go to steemit.chat/home, the official steem chat group. There are post promotion groups in chat. You can post your blog there too for promotion.
You can give a link to your earlier blogs in the newer blog, so readers can check out your work
Why I am saying is promoting your blog in the comments section of someone else's blog is not encouraged and considered as spam, unless that blog has any direct relevance to my blog. Just being a food blog does not qualify it to be posted here in comments section.
I see that you are new to steemit. So my honest advice to you is promote your blogs using various other methods mentioned above. Because if @steemcleaners or some vigilant seniors like @playfulfoodie or @stellabelle catch you, then you could be flagged down. Flagging down is a down vote which can cost your reputation (the number 32 that you see by your name)lower the reputation, lesser visibility you get here. Means no one will see your blogs anymore and no possibility of any comments or payout.
Increase your reputation by posting meaningful blogs and useful comments (like I am doing now to help you) instead of just one liner with blog link that you posted. Your comment does not carry any meaning or usefulness and does not get any appreciation too. In that way your single liner comments can harm you more than being useful.
Lithuania is a beautiful country, please write about your country people, lifestyle, culture, food, (not the 2 minute ready, dip in hot water and ready to eat pasta blog that you posted in your page), write about travel, your passions, your aspirations and much more. There are so many things upon which you can blog meaningfully and usefully here, without resorting to any unethical ways.
Another very important piece of advice. I see from your above suggested blog that you have downloaded the images from internet. Please give proper credit / image source info if the image is not your own. Further copyrighted content and photos cannot be used without express permission of original author. It is very serious crime and also tantamounts to theft or plagiarism and that is strictly a NO here. At steemit, @cheetah is the bot that searches the net for same content and if found your blog could be flagged down with a warning message.
Please post your own content and your own photos. No copy & paste from internet. You will be caught very easily and it may cost you, your reputation and an opportunity to grow here.
Please be very careful on steemit as this is based on blockchain technology which means you cannot delete a post (you get some short period to edit your content though) and your posts and contents remain in public domain accessible to everyone, for a very long time to come. So I wouldn't post plagiarized content /photo here which I will come to regret later, if I were you.
As you are new here, please heed to my advice, steemit is an awesome opportunity and you are fortunate to have found it when it is still in its Beta / nascent stage. Do not squander this golden opportunity.
I shall still up vote your comment here as a token of love and brotherhood with you.
Wish you all the very best here in steemit. May you flourish and prosper here. God bless .
Am living in Mauritius and we have this vegetable we call it here mangoze, but I never taste it , but it contains lot of acid folic and vitamins. Nice recipe.
@creativewoman, that's nice to know. You must try it. It's bitter, but there are ways to make it taste delicious. try the recipe I mentioned above. You can even add a dollop of jaggery to reduce the bitterness.
cut it into pieces and put it in salt water for an hour or two. the bitterness will reduce drastically. Tamarind also gives a new flavour. try it once and you will love it.
Ok thank you so much , I will try it sure.
I am from India bro had this dish many times and I like it a lot.
By the way nice presentation of your post, Upvote from my side and a follow. :)
@romitroksharan, Thanks for your kind words and glad that you liked it.
I was just preparing this dish today and thought, well let me blog it anyway. and this post happened.
I'll have to save this one...I am a type 1 diabetic, & bitter gourd/melon the top recommended fruit to help insulin absorption in the body. I've tinctured it before & it really does help sugar levels in diabetics. Though it is hard to find good ways to cook it because it is so bitter.
@lone-sliver, dip the bitter gourd pieces in a bowl of saltwater for an hour. Then squeeze the bitter gourd pieces and remove it. It should be lesser bitter now. Use tamarind /sour to flavour the gourd. The sour/light bitter dish is really tasty. You can even try adding jaggery. Salt water dipping, Jaggery and tamarind juice are really useful to make the gourd tasty while keeping all its nutritious value intact.
good advice, I've found I like to stuff them with cream cheese & bacon, then bake them in the oven, kind of like a jalapeno popper.
looks so tasty ! have a great week !
@kam.ila
@kam.ila, it was absolutely delicious. you should try it some time.
What a excellent piece @topdog! Very well written and great formatting. Your pictures really added to the instructions and I must say my mouth is watering as I type this!
Great job I will feature this post in today's daily discussion on Steemit Mastermind Group.
Thank you for joining! 😋
@kenistyles, many thanks for your kind words. I am overwhelmed by your appreciation. Thank you again. Feeling awesome :)
Wow, that looks so interesting. I've seen bitter gourds but never tried them. I would certainly try this. Great post, I've followed you.
that looks delicious. upvoted
@catieleta, thanks for your kind words. much appreciated.
All of this looks amazing! My stomach is doing cartwheels right now!
Nice post. I want to try make this food. Can you tell me how to make this one. May be i can try to make this one same nice like your post.
@maulanailham, it is a very simple dish. Just follow the steps that I have mentioned. It requires very little ingredients too. Try it someday. You will love it.
delicious and upvoted
Karele ki sabzee!!is that spicy?
@parnabmaster. Ha Bhai. Lal Mirchi jyada hi dalkhey sabjee banaya tha. Bahut spicy tha..