Dried Fenugreek

Dried Fenugreek is kasoori methi, the dried leaf of the fenugreek plant rather than the hard amber seed. The leaf is soft, grey-green and crumbles to nothing between your fingers, and it tastes warm and savoury with the faint maple-and-celery bitterness that makes butter chicken taste like butter chicken.

Sold as whole dried leaves or ground to a powder. The whole leaf is the one to crush over a finished dish; the powder blends into a dough or a marinade without leaving flecks.

Kasoori methi, also spelled kasuri methi, is a classic finishing herb in South Asian kitchens. Its aroma is deeply savoury and slightly sweet, somewhere between celery, fennel and maple, and a small pinch is enough to give a gravy the rounded, restaurant-style flavour people look for in a good butter chicken or paneer dish.

How to use it

Crush a pinch between your palms and scatter it over dal, butter chicken, methi malai or a vegetable curry in the last minute of cooking. Knead it into paratha and naan dough, or stir it into a yoghurt marinade for chicken. Technique tip: rub it warm between your hands rather than dropping it in whole, since the aroma only wakes up when the leaf is bruised, and add it late because long cooking turns it bitter.

Details

Also known as

Kasoori Methi, Kasuri Methi, Dried Fenugreek Leaves, حلبة مجففة, सूखी मेथी, خشک میتھی