Learn how to make tamarind paste, the quintessential ingredient of the South Indian cuisine in bulk at home from the tamarind block. Check out the detailed homemade tamarind paste recipe

It’s quite hard to imagine my pantry without tamarind, and it’s one of the key ingredients in the South Indian cuisine. Be it for rasam or sambar; you need tamarind paste. Not only South Indian cuisine, other Indian cuisines, and Thai recipes call for tamarind paste as well.

Tamarind-
Before getting into the details, let me share the info that I know about tamarind.

I grew with a lot of tamarind trees around back in my native, and you can find them mostly in tropical and sub-tropical countries. But guess what, it’s a native tree of Tropical Africa.

The tamarind tree produces pod-like fruit, and the flesh/pulp inside the pod is edible, and that’s what we use in our cooking. Back in my native, they use tender tamarind leaves and flowers in cooking as well. I have enjoyed the process of deshelling and deseeding the tamarind in summer and relishing the freshly plucked tamarind – ahh pure nostalgia.

Tamarind pods & blocks-
I do find tamarind pods here(in the Bay Area, not all carry though) in the grocery stores, but I don’t buy them. You need to remove the shell, then deseed it, and then use the flesh. It’s not easy to find these pods. On the other hand, tamarind blocks are quite common.

You will find both soft and hard (bit dried) blocks in the Indian groceries and also in the Asian aisle of the other supermarkets. Tamarind blocks are in a pressed form with the shells and seeds removed, to a certain extent. (PS – even the seedless ones have seeds)