In Ayurveda, there are six tastes: sweet, salty, bitter, sour, pungent and astringent. A meal should ideally contain all of them to improve digestion and stimulate your whole being.
Western diets are generally too sweet, too salty and sometimes overly pungent (hot, spicy). The other tastes (bitter, sour and astringent) tend to be infrequent or entirely missing from our diet. To ensure you are getting enough of each taste, use my Ayurvedic ‘Six Taste Spice Mix’ which has all the tastes included. Sprinkle it like magic powder on your food. It stimulates your six taste buds and activates the Ayurvedic energies in your body.
Fennel and cardamom provide the sweet taste in this mixture; ginger and pepper are the main pungent (hot) flavours. The salt makes it salty and fenugreek gives it the bitter taste. Amchur is dried unripe mango powder, which is very sour. The remaining astringent taste comes from the turmeri
Ayurvedic 6 Taste Spice Mix
Ingredients 20 green cardamom pods 1 tsp fennel seeds 1 tsp black peppercorns 1 tsp Himalayan salt 1 tsp ground turmeric 1 tsp ground coriander 1 tsp ground ginger ½ tsp ground fenugreek ½ tsp dried mango powder (amchur)
Method
Open the cardamom pods to release the seeds.
Put the seeds into a grinder or pulverise them using a pestle and mortar.
Add the fennel seeds and peppercorns to the cardamom seeds and grind into a powder.
Add the salt. Stir in the remaining ground spices.
I recommend using this at the table instead of salt and pepper.
If stored in a sealed jar, it will keep for a few weeks.