I'm an incoming PhD student to the US from India. Food will be the second biggest expense after rent, so I'm definitely planning to cook at home as much as possible. I'm mostly familiar with cooking only Indian food, so I have a few questions that I hope this subreddit can help me with.

First: I'm planning on cooking rice, pulses/legumes (Dal, chickpeas/chana, kidney beans/rajma), potatoes, okra/lady's fingers, beans. At least in the beginning, I'm planning to cook a large batch of legumes for 2-3 days and freeze them. Is that a good plan, or am I missing something?

Second: In India, I use a pressure cooker for the legumes and a rice cooker for the rice. I'm sure I can get a rice cooker easily in the US, but for the legumes, I've been told that there is something called an "instant pot". Is it sufficient to get an instant pot in the US, or is it advisable for me to carry a small pressure cooker from India?

Third: Should I bother carrying any other utensils or kitchen equipment from India? I.e., is there anything that I can't get easily or decently cheaply over there?

Aside from this, any advice, suggestions or tips are very welcome, like any other dishes I can depend on for quick cooking, something I should bring from India, something I should know, etc.

Thanks a lot!

I love the taste of channa dal in my tempering or tadka in a dish. However, my father has some challenges eating the hard channa dal, due to dental issues. So I was wondering if there is a way that I can make the channa dal a little more friendly for him. He can handle the urad dal just fine, but I hate to sacrifice the channa dal taste.

I was wondering if anyone has ever tried soaking the channa dal and then putting that into the tempering? I am pretty sure the water will cause the oil to spurt up, so I have to be careful. Hence, I wanted to ask if anyone has done this before trying it myself.

I think I have tried to powder the channa dal before putting it into the tempering, but that did not work very well.

If anyone found a good work around, please pass along your suggestions.

I’m gonna head back to my hostel soon and I have new allergies because of Covid.

im currently on a histamine triggering elimination diet. this means I cannot consume dairy, gluten, fermented food etc.

while this doesn’t affect my lunch and dinner, this removes most of the breakfast items that are served at my hostel.

I need some easy to make non inflammatory breakfast recipes which can be cooked using an electric kettle.

So basically I boiled raw mangoes today to make an Indian drink. Bit somehow I left the boiled raw mango in the water, outside of the fridge for almost 4 to 5 hours. Now they smell a little like henna and when I searched about it on Google, it told me to throw them away because of possible bacterial formation and just what not life threatening problems. My mother Tasted and smelled it and she says it's alright. BUT google says that this kind of bacteria doesn't changes the smell and taste of food but it still exists.

Tell me what I should do. Is google exaggerating it or WHAT??

I have some leftover paneer tikka gravy like the orange one and I just don't know how to use it or should I discard it. Like I have boneless chicken and I was thinking of using that gravy maybe like make it look like butter chicken or something. But for the chicken do you still have to marinate or saute in oil then add the gravy?

I have bought Punjab King rice as always and this time it didn't come in blue "Premium" packaging, but instead it's a brown "Super" packaging.

All seems to be the same - there's not much written on the packaging, and from the see-through side they look pretty much the same.

Is it likely that it's just a different packaging or are these terms somehow regulated and mean something specific?