The Hindi name for tempering or blooming spices in ghee is tadka. It's also known in other Indian cultures as vaghar or chaunk. Now, there’s not much Indians will agree on but blooming spices in hot ghee is one of them.

Tadka is to India what the mother sauce is to France.

You may have heard the term tadka in tadka dal. But, tadka is everywhere. Practically every Indian dish begins or ends with tadka.

Except, even after ten years of cooking Indian food, I was still doing tadka wrong.

I'd add all the spices in at once which would result in some spices burning while others were raw, I was adding too many spices to my tadka and perhaps the worst, only doing one tadka.

Until one day, I read @krishashok's book Masala Lab.

"What you put in your tadka and when is based on the thickness of the spice’s coating or the amount of moisture it contains"

Thanks to this understanding, my Indian food is now 5x better.

This means that mustard seeds, cumin and pepper which are relatively burn-proof, should go in first. Fresh spices like garlic, ginger or curry leaves that burn quickly go in later.

I've often only done the ghee tadka once, at the start.

But, I learned that the goal of the opening tadka is to add depth of flavour while the goal of the finishing one is to impart a whiff of flavour.

This means you add your stronger spices like cloves, cardamom, cinnamon at the start with your onions, ginger etc. Lighter spices like fenugreek leaves, green cardamom, saffron and even that final dash of garam masala should go at the end of your cooking.

And if you take nothing away from this article, take away this.

The next time you cook, add ghee twice. Once at the start and once at the end.