What is tamarind?
Tamarind is a fruit that’s actually part of the legume family. Yep, you read that right, a legume fruit. But unlike its mild and mushy cousins, beans and peas, it’s filled with a sweet and tart flavor that packs a punch. Tamarinds are found on large, slow growing trees that originated from Africa. These days they are predominantly grown and exported from other subtropical parts of Asia like India. Tamarind has a brown, hard shell that’s shaped like a bumpy pea pod that encases a soft, pulpy center where the edible fruit is located—beware though because each pod has a large seed inside. As a child, one of my favorite aunts had a huge tamarind tree in her yard where I would pick the tamarind pods and suck on the fruit, popping out the seeds one by one.
Where to buy tamarind
You can buy tamarind either fresh with its pods still intact, in condensed pulp blocks, in a premade paste or concentrate jar, and many more versions at various Asian grocery stores like Ranch 99, or Mexican grocery stores. Using premade paste or concentrate is the fastest way to incorporate the tamarind taste into a recipe since you don’t have to deal with breaking down the pods and removing seeds.
What is tamarind paste?
Tamarind paste is a concentrated and sometimes cooked down paste made of tamarind fruit. For this recipe, tamarind paste is made by soaking fresh tamarind flesh with boiling water, straining it through a filter, and then cooking it down to produce a concentrated tangy flavor.
Tamarind paste uses
While tamarind is delicious on its own as a snack, tamarind paste is also an ingredient in many different types of cuisines, like Vietnamese canh chua, Filipino pork sinigang, or pad Thai. Many of these recipes use tamarind in a paste form that has a condensed sweet and tart flavor. This recipe will show you how to make tamarind paste from scratch using fresh tamarind pods.
Tamarind paste substitutes
If you can’t find fresh tamarind, tamarind pulp, or tamarind paste, you can also use lime juice or a combination of vinegar and sugar to substitute for tamarind paste, although it might change the recipe slightly. I like to add some lime juice in my tamarind paste to give it a tangier flavor too.
Whole tamarind pods
While I was trying to make sinigang, I unfortunately couldn’t find premade paste or even the concentrated pulp version of tamarind. I was able to find fresh tamarind pods available at my local Filipino supermarket called Seafood City. These pods were imported from Thailand directly and are a regular item at many Asian grocery stores. You can also buy fresh pods online if you can’t find any instore.
Tamarind pulp (solid blocks that need rehydration)
Tamarind also comes in the form of condensed pulp. These blocks are deshelled tamarind fruit with the seeds removed that include all the fruit in a very dense and compressed cube. This varies from the paste because the pulp is not yet strained or cooked down.
Using tamarind pods vs pulp to make a paste
For this specific recipe, I used fresh pods since they are more available to me through my local Asian grocery stores and I was unable to find tamarind pulp. One point to mention is to use tools that are non-reactive metals since tamarind is very acidic and can damage cast iron or aluminum.
Storage
You can then transfer it to a heat-safe, non-reactive container like glass and wait for it to cool. I typically use my paste immediately in another recipe or leave it in the fridge with an airtight lid. I’ve kept tamarind paste in my fridge for a few days before I’ve used it up in a recipe. I try to make this fresh to get the best flavor out of my tamarind.
