Rediscovery of the Humble Masala Dabba

On a rainy Saturday evening, a longing for something familiar began. Instead of my go-to Tom Yum soup, the stomach started reminiscing about the comfort of a bowl of dal, rice and a small serving of a fiery, tangy, mouth-puckering mango pickle. I guess this is how the feeling of homesickness announces itself. Not through the melodramatic phone calls home, but through the stomach's increasingly strident demands for specific combinations of salt, heat, and memory.

I went trudging through the Countdown (as it was called back then) aisles to haul the quintessential spices. Into the cart went the easy finds - turmeric, cumin, and coriander. And that was when I first laid my eyes on ‘curry powder,’ sitting there blazingly like a yellow traffic cone. I circled it like a suspicious cat. What constitutes a curry powder? Apparently, the combination of coriander, turmeric, fenugreek, ginger, mustard seeds, all the usual suspects, rounded up into an alliance.

The word ‘curry’ itself carries colonial baggage. image sourced/pexel amc

The logic never computed. How could one blend service the sprawling universe of Indian food?

From the cream-heavy kormas of Mughal kitchens to the moringa-powered sambars of Tamil Nadu, from the mustard oil-soaked fish curries of Bengal to the dry, smoky rajma of Punjab, what hubris to think a single powder could suffice it all.

I tried it once, eventually. The result tasted exactly as intended: like curry. Generic, anonymous curry. The kind that confirms every lazy assumption about Indian food being a monolithic brown sauce punctuated by varying degrees of heat.

The word ‘curry’ itself carries colonial baggage. It's an anglicised catch-all that emerged when British rulers couldn't differentiate between the dopiaza, xacuti and the rogan josh. Complex, regional cooking traditions were flattened into a single ‘curry’ category. On a brighter note, this word is currently undergoing reclamation, and only time will tell its future.

Countdown could provide the basics, but I needed to get my hands on the specifics. I required Kashmiri chilli powder, for its modest heat and its colour, that deep, tantalizing red that invites you to dig in. I needed tamarind paste that would make your cheeks contract involuntarily, not the sweet-and-sour compromise of commercial chutneys.

My friends and a Google search pointed to one direction - Lotus supermarket. While some of their fresh produce section looked like they had been forgotten, the rest of their store held treasures. Freshly made paneer, dosa batter, Kasundi mustard, dried methi (fenugreek leaves), garlic fryums, amchur (dried mango powder), they stocked it all. I came back with two full bags of groceries that day. Which brought me to my next dilemma. Cooking off these packets is a handful mission. When onions are browning and oil is at precisely the right temperature, you have a very tight window to add the mustard seeds that quickly splutter, throw in the hing (asafoetida) and turmeric before the whole enterprise descends into burnt chaos. I needed the help of the reliable spice arsenal: the masala dabba.

The masala dabba looks deceptively simple: a circular wooden or steel container holding seven smaller bowls arranged like a flower. But it holds much more than tiny ramekins. The masala dabba is the anticurry powder. Where commercial blends homogenise, the dabba celebrates specificity. And there are no rulebooks when it comes to what goes into the masala dabba. Just like all things in life, your arsenal reflects your cooking preferences and displays your regional pride.

Back home in Mangalore, our kitchens would invariably house a coconut grater and a wet grinder for making the fiery pastes that form the backbone of coastal curries. Not something you would find in a Gujarati or a Punjabi kitchen. Similarly, our spices would differ too. Byadgi chillies (deep in colour and mildly spicy), whole coriander seeds, and dried kokum pods are staples in our pantries.

My dabba had a container of bafat powder, a combination of powdered byadgi chillies, Kashmiri chillies, coriander seeds, peppercorns and other accompanying spices. This quickly brought a distinguished Mangalorean flavour to chicken sukka (a Mangalorean-style dry chicken dish, slow-cooked with grated coconut and a fiery blend of spices).

Anu Meha of Madhushala, an Indian supper club in Vancouver, walks us through her masala dabba. “Mine always carries turmeric, red chilli, coriander, and cumin… but also black mustard seeds, whole coriander seeds, and fenugreek. If it had one more compartment, I know it would hold panch phoran — the Indian five-spice blend that carries so much depth.”

Families would purchase whole spices in bulk during harvest festivals, making annual pilgrimages to markets famous for specialties. image sourced/pexels amc

The system of storing our spices in masala dabbas rose from practical necessity back when Indian households operated on seasonal rhythms. Families would purchase whole spices in bulk during harvest festivals, making annual pilgrimages to markets famous for specialties. These spices would be spread on terraces to dry, filling entire neighbourhoods with aromatic clouds that announced the changing seasons better than any calendar.

The dried spices would be ground on a flat stone called silbatta or a mortar and pestle. It was also common for the spices to be taken to a local mill, which would have larger grinding stones to whip out bigger batches of ground spices. The resulting powders lived in large storage jars, carefully protected from humidity and light in dedicated storage spaces. But cooking required constant access to multiple spices, and here the masala dabba solved an ancient problem: how do you bridge the gap between storage and stove? A portion of each ground spice would migrate to the dabba, creating a curated selection of your most essential flavours within arm's reach of your burner.

Even as packaged spices have conquered modern Indian kitchens—and there's no shame in that convenience—the masala dabba remains ubiquitous as ever, sometimes doubling in numbers. Ground spices occupy one container while whole spices claim another, each adding different textural and aromatic layers to a dish.

While the primary function of a masala dabba is to provide easy access to your preferred spices, for many, it comes with a deeper meaning. "I remember running home on blustery Chicago afternoons in the winter, cheeks rosy and nose cold, and being greeted by the aroma of onions, garlic, and spices blooming; cumin, turmeric, coriander, and cinnamon, all stored in my mom’s masala dabba. Always by her side, she cooked not with measurements but with intuition, teaching me that the dabba was more than a round tin of spices. It holds my memories, culture, and remains the heart of our cooking. When I moved into my Berkeley home, it was the first gift my mother gave me, a reminder that spices do not just add flavour but are the backbone of every dish, from biryani to chana masala, and that each meal carries with it the warmth of my childhood,” says Shahla from My Berkeley Kitchen.

Anu Meha found her box years ago in Pune’s antique Juna Bazar. “What drew me to it was the sense that it had already lived many lives — passed through different homes, opened countless times a day, sitting faithfully on a kitchen shelf as the closest companion of a homemaker. I think this dabba is older than I am, and every time I open it, I feel connected to the thousands of meals it has already flavoured.”

So, if you're trying your hand at cooking Indian food, ditch the curry powder and gift yourself a masala dabba. The difference will make itself known. Not just in the flavours you create, but in how you approach the entire act of cooking.

Asia Media Centre