What are whistles in Indian cuisine?
I bought some season packs for making butter chicken from an Indian grocer in California. The time to cook is 2 whistles, how much time is a whistle?
In India, most cooking these days are done using pressure cooker. Depending on the quantity of food, the intervals of whistle varies. This process is basically the pressure coming out. for less quantity the duration is less. Also how many whistles depend on what type of food is cooked. For chicken, since it cooks fast, you will only need 1 whistle, whereas for Rice or Dal (Cereal or Pulses) you might need 3-4 depending on the quantity. Butter chicken normally requires 1 whistle but you can again put it on pressure for another whistle by checking the chicken out.
Sounds like the packs are giving instructions for preparations in a pressure cooker.
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Indian cuisine and cookery have all sorts of pressure cookers. I believe that after the first whistle (steam release) from a pressure cooker whistle, you turn the heat down to stop the whistling, and wait for more steam to build up to a second whistle. Some recipes call for 4 whistles!
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Make sure and read this link: http://missvickie.com/library/whistling.htm
It’s the pressure cooker whistles! But it actually depends on the brand of pressure cooker as well. Most Indians depend on pressure cookers for daily cooking.
I hope you bought Parampara Butter Chicken seasoning packets, they are the best!
Interesting article:
A type of pressure cooker that is common in India, but seldom seen in the US, is the ‘whistling’ pressure cooker that actually emits a big puff of steam and a short 5 second whistle. These Indian pressure cookers have another style of stationary pressure regulator. The user puts the pressure regulator on the vent pipe after seeing a steady stream of steam and then waits as the pressure inside builds. When the pressure reaches 15psi it then exceeds the weight of the regulator, causing a loud blast of escaping steam that lifts the weight on the vent tube, producing a sharp whistle. The first whistle takes the longest, about 7 minutes, and indicates the cooker is fully pressurized, after which the heat is reduced, and the time is counted beginning with the next whistle. These cookers operate with oscillating pressures, cycling through building pressure and then releasing it with a whistling sound of escaping steam. Cooks in India rely on the whistle noise as a handy built-in timer. Indian pressure cookers are somewhat unique in using amplitude and frequency of pressure, rather than the more familiar constant pressure Westerners find in our pressure cookers.
We have all seen interesting Indian recipes that look enough to try, but we’re stumped when they say something like, "Cook for 2 whistles". What does that mean, where are the conversion charts to explain how to time a cooker that fluctuates, versus one that works with constant pressure? Why isn’t this information available to help us non-Indian cooks adapt recipes that are timed in ‘whistles’, to a standard number of minutes?
Most Indian recipes require less than 3-4 whistles, and rely on the natural release method to finish the cooking process, but what unit of time does each whistle mean?
**It’s approximately 3 minutes/whistle.
References :
In India, most cooking these days are done using pressure cooker. Depending on the quantity of food, the intervals of whistle varies. This process is basically the pressure coming out. for less quantity the duration is less. Also how many whistles depend on what type of food is cooked. For chicken, since it cooks fast, you will only need 1 whistle, whereas for Rice or Dal (Cereal or Pulses) you might need 3-4 depending on the quantity. Butter chicken normally requires 1 whistle but you can again put it on pressure for another whistle by checking the chicken out.
References :