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Who doesn’t love kaju katli? The star ingredient of this popular sweet is our beloved kaju or cashew. Known for its high nutritional value, this nut contains high protein content and is considered for weight loss too. Apart from being consumed raw or in the form of a snack or dessert, this versatile fruit or nut can actually make your cooking easy. Right from adding creaminess to enhancing the flavour and texture, cashews can do it all. Amazing, isn’t it?
Here are 6 different ways in which cashews can help in cooking. Have a look:
USE It To Increase Creaminess
If you want to increase the creaminess of any dish, just add some cashews paste and see the magic. Mostly added to special paneer curries, cashews add a great richness and creaminess to the dishes. They also add a hint of sweetness to the dish and also enhance their texture. To make the cashew, blend some cashews with a little milk.
USE It For Marination
Apart from adding richness and creaminess to gravies, cashews can also be used in marination of meat. In a lot of kebabs and tikkas, especially the Afghani dishes like Afghani paneer or Afghani chicken, cashews are made into a paste and used as a marinade. They give a tempting taste and texture to the dishes.
USE It In Stews And Soups
Did you know that you can actually use cashews instead of flour in many stew and soup recipes? Cashew is considered a thickening agent and thus, could be used in the place of flour used for the same purpose. In order to use cashews for soups and stews, just ground them into a fine powder and you are good to go.
USE It In Rice Dishes
Have you ever spotted cashews in a heavenly pulao or scrumptious biryani? This is because cashews add the right flavour and crunch to the rice dishes. Cashews are added in Hyderabadi biryani, vegetable pulao, Bisi Bele Bhaat and so many other rice varieties too.
USE It In Namkeens
Cashews, because of its unique taste and crunch factor, are considered ideal for snacking. Thus, they are added to many namkeen and chivda varieties. To make a go-to snack using this versatile nut, just add some cashews to the namkeens and chivdas with some basic spices like salt, black pepper, red chili powder etc.
USE It For Garnishing
We are well aware of the desserts and snacks made up of cashews, but did you know that cashews are used for garnishing too? To dishes like kheer, basundi and rabri, cashew nuts and many other dishes are incomplete without cashews.
