Hing (Asafoetida)

Hing is the dried latex tapped from the root of Ferula plants, usually sold ground and cut with rice or wheat flour to tame it. Raw, it smells aggressive; cooked, a pinch in hot ghee turns savoury and rounded — the backbone of the no-onion-no-garlic kitchen, which is why Vaishnava and Jain cooking adopted it so completely.

Use it at the tempering stage: after the seeds crackle, a small pinch of hing in the hot fat for a few seconds before the tempering meets the dal. Too much ruins a dish; a sixteenth of a teaspoon is often plenty. In the ayurvedic frame it is sharply pungent and heating, the classical friend of digestion and of vāta.