Indian Spices
Spices are the ingredients that give life to the food items. Indian Spices particularly are not only those which give aroma and taste to the dishes, but also the ones that help the regular users to gain and retain many health immunities.
Some of the Indian Spices are known for their medicinal applications and from time immemorial, India has been cultivating and using a variety of Indian spices for preparing native medicines.
Some of the Indian Spices are very essential for taking care of young mothers, particularly during post natal period, while most of the spices are administered in their regular diets for quite some period for the health of the mother and baby.
In the Culinary Applications
Spices are used while preparing food items, mostly for side dishes taken with bread slices, roti or rice. The spices are added in different forms mostly chopped or ground, while it is the practice to roast them along with pulses or sometimes sprinkled after the food is served. They add to the flavour and some of them are used as toppings. The Indian spices are directly applied in powdered form with rice to extract the nutrients and with beverages they are added in the right quantity with sugar or honey with them to make them tasty and healthy.
It is a common practice for adding the flavour of Ginger or Cardamom, with every cup of tea with which an Indian householder entertains one’s guests. Some of the Indian Spices like mustard or cumin is fried with oil and mixed with other spicy items to add flavour and taste.
In the Medicinal Applications
Some of the Indian spices are always used as home remedies for illnesses like cold, fever, indigestion and few others that commonly occur in every household, particularly to children. It is generally referred as Grand Mother’s medicines in the native language for it is the elderly women of the family who know how to make a medical application using Indian Spices.
Nutmeg is used to cure fever, while thymol seed is one used for helping digestion. If one is in a state of diarrhoea, home medicines are made in the form of oral dehydration treatment by using salt and sugar with water. The tonics are made with dry ginger while fresh Ginger is considered to be an agent which prevents cancer, research on which is still going on.
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