The crackling physics of cooking tadka

Cooking is often called an art, and just like art can be incomprehensible at times, so can exotic cooking be inedible. They said a curry couldn’t really be a curry if its tadka had been cooked in water rather than in oil. Oil and water In most Indian curry preparations, the tadka is the first step: in a bit of heated oil, the cook puts either cumin or mustard seeds. Tadka as art Since my friends refused to imbibe my curry, I have made sure my kitchen is always well-stocked with oil, but even then getting the tadka just right is hard. If you’re wondering why molecules of oil behave the way they do or what decides whether the surface of a seed will crack open, you should consider taking a physics course here at IIT Kanpur where some of us teach.