Home made Sambar Powder

This is a long pending post in my drafts. Sambar powder is very useful and handy for the preparation of everyday sambar, we use it for making kootu, poriyal, sometimes for specific rasams too, what not? I also add this to roast potatoes and brinjal fry. Some may find it weird, but it lends a great flavour to these. After all this is nothing but mainly dhaniya (coriander seeds) and red chillies, which we use separately in other recipes, so I replace those with sambar powder. Many of us don’t know the multi purpose use of it, but I find it very useful to me.

My mom used to make sambar powder at home earlier but now she uses store bought ones as well as her preparation. I have actually combined MIL's and mom's sambar powder and made one. 

Sambar powder is kerala and Tamil nadu are made different. And the difference is coconut. Yes roast coconut is added to sambar powder in Kerala but not so in Tamil Nadu.

Ingredients:
Red chillies (long red variety) 35 grams
Coriander seeds (Dhaniya) 50 grams
Channa dal 10 grams
Toor dal 5 grams
Pepper (black,whole) 5 grams
Jeera 5 grams
Fenugreek seeds (vendhayam) 5 grams
Asafoetida - 10 grams
Coconut - 15 grams

Method:

• Roast all ingredients individually until nice aroma comes. Roast the coconut until it turns brown. Let them cool.
• I powder all the ingredients except coconut and then at the end add coconut and powder.
• The powder resulting from the above mentioned quantity lasts for about 50-60 days for me. So I prepare in small batches.
• If you want to prepare huge batches (like 1KG) then I would recommend to sun-dry the ingredients and powder them in a mill.
• We can also add turmeric to this powder but I generally have fresh home-made turmeric powder separately. 
• After powdering allow the powder to cool and store in air tight containers. I usually store in  One big and one small container in which I transfer weekly for everyday use. By that way, even if we touch it with wet hands, it will get over soon and the big container sambar powder is saved.
• Just add 2 spoons of this powder to make sambar for serving 4.

Notes:
Do not use wet hands while handling the sambar powder, always use clean spoons.
Adding channa dal more in the above recipe will make the sambar overflow while boiling and also the sambar will turn too thick after some time.