Sambar Varieties

A collection of delicious and healthy sambar varieties that delight. Sambar: The quintessential dish of Tamil Nadu, which is famous across South India, is a tamarind-based stew prepared with lentils(split yellow pigeon peas) and vegetables. You can enjoy sambar with rice, and you can also see sambar being served with idli, dosa, ven pongal - the South Indian breakfast items.

Yes, sambar is an integral part of South Indian cuisine. Now here comes the fun part: there isn't just one sambar recipe. You can find different varieties of sambar recipes, and that's the main reason behind creating this category - sambar varieties.

Sambar podi

To make sambar, we need an aromatic spice blend which we call sambar podi. You can make it fresh every time, or you can make it in bulk and store it. Alternatively, you can also find this blend in Indian groceries and use the same.

Sambar varieties

In our household, when we say sambar, it always means sambar prepared with freshly ground spices and coconut. Yes, we add coconut, and the taste is terrific. We call it arachuvitta(Tamil word meaning "to grind," "ground") sambar, and I have quite a few arachuvitta sambar recipes on my blog. Like I said before, you can make the sambar with the premade sambar podi. For my raw mango sambar, leeks sambar, that's what I did.

Let's talk about vegetables. You don't need to add multiple vegetables to the sambar always. We usually add one vegetable and call the sambar by that name like vendakkai sambar, meaning sambar with okra—Mullungi sambar meaning sambar with radish.

Typically, toor dal is used to make a sambar, but you can make a sambar with moong dal(yellow split moong lentils) and masoor dal(red lentils). I have those on my blog too.

Let me stop here. I can keep talking about sambar recipes all day long, and a single post won't be sufficient. Here is my collection and check out the individual sambar recipes for more details.