💬 Most restaurants get mirchi ka salan wrong

I ate mirchi ka salan at a biryani place in Tolichowki yesterday and I'm still annoyed. It was too sour. I could taste the tamarind before I could taste anything else at all. The chilli was there but only as a background. The peanut and sesame base had gone missing. I finished it anyway because I paid ₹80 for the cup. That's my weakness. A good one has a thick gravy that coats the spoon. It tastes of peanut first. Then the tang comes in slowly and the heat arrives last, near the back of your throat. My grandmother made it on Sundays and I used to scrape the pot with my fingers. She never measured the tamarind. She tasted from the ladle and shook her head a lot. Some places make it too spicy, which is the other mistake. Then it's just heat and sweat. I went to one near Charminar last year where my nose ran for 20 minutes. My friend Imtiaz ate it with a smile on his face. I think his tongue had given up. I'd rather have it dull than angry, but dull isn't fun either, so I keep searching. The best salan I've had in the last 5 years was at a wedding, from a huge pot. A man in a white apron was stirring it with a spoon as long as his arm. I asked him for the recipe. He said, a bit of this and a bit of that. I went back for seconds twice. I'm still angry about the restaurant one, though.

The peanut and sesame base going missing is the real crime, because tamarind alone cannot fix that. I ate salan at a wedding in Karimnagar last year that coated the spoon exactly as you describe, and I asked the cook for the secret. He said slow roasting and patience, and that nobody has either now. Did you finish the 80 rupee cup out of habit?

My mother in law's version is heavy on the peanut and has barely any tamarind. I thought it was wrong at first.