Will the real Sour Tamarind please stand up?

Young Tamarind Pod

by Azélia on 27/11/2010

in Ingredient List

Last night I got myself into a state of confusion over tamarind and it was preventing me from falling asleep.  By now it has become a familiar statement of mine hasn’t it?  The subject of food…just add me to the mix…and the result?  Confusion on my part!  That’s ok with me.  I get confused, I search.  And then I search some more…and sometimes may even find an answer.

In a conversation with dear Sunflower the subject of tamarind came up and me declaring to her how I didn’t find tamarind sour at all and I couldn’t understand why people refer to it as a souring agent in recipes and suggesting using a lemon to replace it.  I had experimented using it from a tamarind block and also from fresh pods in recipes, expecting a sourness of a lemon but instead found it quite sweet.  I confess it doesn’t just taste of sweetness, it has a more complex flavour and more depth and slightly tang at the end but I would hardly call it sour.  Apparently it’s an ingredient in Worcestershire sauce.  Sunflower explained how you can buy different pods that are very sour in grocery stores in Chinatown.  I did just that.

I bought my little pack of different looking tamarind pods without knowing how to treat them to find out how sour they were.  From the two photos below you can see how different they look.  Top photo are the ones I bought in Chinatown, they have a ridged line down the middle, flattish shape, the shell is not as smooth as the other pods and are a greenish brown colour.  The bottom photo is the tamarind I can buy more easily, the type you see in cookery books and if google it’s the one that comes up everytime, brown and smooth shell which easily cracks when you squeeze it with your hands.

I had this new species at home and I was a bit like those monkeys under study…you know the ones…when a zoologist throws an object amongst the monkeys to see what they do with it…and they pick it up…sniff it…bash it a few times on the ground…fight over it…that sort of thing.  I kept looking at it...sniffed it…try to crack with my hands…but too hard.  I did stop myself from bashing it on the floor or biting it. I used my pestle and mortar to smash it open, smell it and put it to my tongue to see if sour…Yes definitely sourness.

Very Sour Tamarind Pods

Sweet Tamarind Pods

I  snapped one and it revealed a white watery solid innards.  It had to be a different species of tamarind.  I googled but nothing came up that looked like these.  I looked in some spice books and Indian books but nothing, they only showed the brown sweeter variety.  Went to bed confused thinking I had a different variety of tamarind, a very sour type but could not find any reference to them

This morning I looked again in my books and finally in my Thai book I saw photos of them, in Vatch’s Thai’s cookbook by Vatcharin Bhumichitr.  He has a photo of the brown smooth pods and next to them are these green flattish pods...uurrhmmm...oh I see…he says these were the young pods of tamarind. Doh. Now it makes sense why I couldn’t find any reference on the net for them.  They’re just simply the unripe pods of tamarind.

I wanted to see just how sour these unripe tamarind pods were.  I smashed a large one up and adding a little water to a pan boiled it for 5 mins.

How Sour Is Unripe Tamarind Pods?

Oh heck…they sour!  No…I mean really sour!  All I had was a teaspoon of this water and my mouth felt it had entered some sort of vacuum of dryness.  If any of you have eaten an unripe persimmon?  Don’t confuse persimmon with the sharon fruit which looks similar but a different fruit.  If you have you’re on the right track. Not like lemon bitterness where you eat some but then after a drink that sourness is washed away.  No, this sourness is just like unripe persimmon sourness, it’s the sort that clings on to the inside of your mouth for a while, no matter what you drink or eat.

Now I get why people don’t find unripe tamarind very appealing for common use.  I can see where it would be handy, a small touch of sour to balance a dish and the common use of it for pickling.  The ripe pods of tamarind is used in many sweet dishes and for making sweets as well as in savoury recipes.

Ripe Tamarind.

This year was the first time I’ve used these ripe tamarind pods.

They crack easily with a squeeze of your hands.  I soaked some in hot water and then you can slip the seeds and fibres out easily, and the flesh dissolves into the water giving you a thick paste.

Tamarind Block

According to Sunflower it’s better to buy tamarind in block and dilute some in hot water to make paste.  The ready made paste will differ according to brands making it harder to know how much to use.

Here’s what Sunflower has to say on tamarind block, “Good old tamarind block is cheap, reliable in taste and consistency and keeps for ages in the cupboard without taking up valuable fridge space. I have bought concentrate so watery it’s a waste of money and space.” I couldn’t put it better myself.

This photo below was sent by Joanna to see if it was the same sweet variety as mine.  I had read you can get two different lengths, smaller ones like mine containing 6-8 seeds and ones like Joanna’s 12-14 seeds…though Joanna I count 16 seeds on yours below :-)

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{ 14 comments }

Kavey November 27, 2010 at 4:33 pm

You know, as I was reading, I was saying to myself, I wonder if they are simply unripe pods and, for once (it’s very rare) I guessed right!

I use the tamarind blocks to make the tamarind ketchup or sauce that people have been so kind about. We call it a chutney in India but in Britain people assume chutneys have solid content so I refer to is as a ketchup or sauce instead. I think it’s my grandfather’s recipe.

Sasa November 27, 2010 at 8:25 pm

The kind of sour you can’t wash away (like licking a deodorant stick o_0) is called astringent ^_^

Azélia November 27, 2010 at 8:46 pm

Kavey that’s wonderful, you have something very special to pass on.

Azélia November 27, 2010 at 8:50 pm

Sasa – Next time you see an unripe persimmon…take a bite…I dare you ;-)

mrfoodie November 27, 2010 at 9:08 pm

nothing beats fresh tamarind. great write up!

Joanna November 28, 2010 at 12:26 am

I bought some of Thai sweet tamarind pods earlier in the year at a Vietnamese store in Bristol, the shop owner told me that they were a seasonal speciality, a particular variety or cultivar of tamarind that was sweet. They were delicious, something like a citrussy flavoured date I guess. I just peeled them and de stringed them and ate them, spitting the big seeds out with a satisfying clunk. I thought the seeds were very pretty and if I had been one of those people who made arty things with seeds I would have kept them, or even tried to grow them, but I didn’t. I had always thought tamarind was sour till that point, knowing it mainly as a component in behl poori type dishes and so on. So are my ‘Thai pods’ the same as yours above? Who knows?

Azélia November 28, 2010 at 8:47 am

Joanna – I think they’re not the same as mine because when searching for information I came across somewhere stating there was a different variety of tamarind which was sweeter than the common ones here, so I know there are sweeter varieties. I’m guessing like with clementines, slightly different varieties. And I haven’t a clue where I saw this formation! I’ll probably came across it again when looking for something else :-) ….so this coming year if you find them again take photo, it will interesting to see what they look like?

sunflower December 1, 2010 at 1:04 pm

Interesting. I didn’t know the one you bought in China town looks raw inside. I am quite sure the type that made into block of cooking tamarinds comes from the ripe type but more sour variety or maybe less ripe before they were picked and processed,

Azélia December 1, 2010 at 3:59 pm

Hi Sunflower – I’ve just posted the photo Joanna sent me of the tamarind she bought and as you can see hers are longer than mine. I had read you get two different lengths of tamarind from different countries but can not remember where I read this or what countries they were, nor where I read that there exists slight sweeter variety still. That’s the trouble with reading things late at night!

I think you may be right with picking them just before ripe so you have some sweetness but with more acidity.

CM November 3, 2012 at 10:32 pm

this is a very useful post. i am trying to find out which is the correct tamarind to use for making south indian dishes like sambar. i don’t want to use the concentrates or blocks. i tried the sweet tamarind from thailand and it was very bland. hardly any taste with light sweetness. i tried the flatish tamarind from mexico and they are actually sour. they are not whiteish on the inside like you have shown. that seems almost too raw. i have never seen tamarind like that in that color. does it have any seeds in that? it seems as if the seeds didn’t even form. however ones from mexico are often cracked, exposed to the air…not well kept, sometimes they don’t seem to be grown right. but they do have the sour taste and are brown with fully formed seeds. they are not roundish but flatish pods.

it would help if someone could tell me how fresh tamarind pod should be for making sambar. what should it look like etc. and how to use it. i find with the mexican one one large pod adds a lot of sourness. do you cook the vegetables in the tamarind water itself or pour tamarind water after vegetables have been done cooking towards the end?

Azélia November 4, 2012 at 8:02 am

CM – I have no idea how the tamarind is used in sambar that you mention. Yes I use the water from it in the curries, I don’t cook vegetables as such with it on their own, it’s always mixed into a curry of some kind.

CM December 20, 2012 at 5:50 pm

the one that says tesco in the black package was that sour or sweet? when it says ripe does that mean sweet? it looks just like the sweet tamarind but shorter.

Mark January 12, 2013 at 9:20 pm

Can someone tell me where I can buy sour tamarind pods and monkeypods in US? I will greatly appreciate it. Thank you.

Sonia February 10, 2013 at 9:10 pm

Thanks Azelia this a great article and thanks for clearing up my confusion about the green tamarind!

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