If I'm using amchur primarily just for the tanginess, are there any good substitutes? I'd rather avoid things like lemon juice, since often it's very convenient that it's a powder, not a liquid.
What’s a good substitute for amchur
mangosubstitutions
Related Solutions
When you find cheap lemons, buy a lot. Squeeze half a lemon in each of the cavities of an ice tray. Freeze. Within a day, remove the frozen slivers from the tray to a ziploc bag in the freezer. You now have measured units of fresh lemon juice you may use for cooking and will keep for months. The frozen lemons are a bit less acid than fresh juice, but full of flavor. You can do the same with limes.
This depends on what you mean by a gelatin "substitute".
What you have to understand is that while most hydrocolloids have gelling and stabilizing properties, they are not simply interchangeable. You can't substitute one of them 1-for-1 where you need gelatin and expect everything to just work.
A great place to start would be the Hydrocolloid Recipe Collection which, despite its name, is almost more of a cookbook, because it has detailed information on the properties of each hydrocolloid.
Agar is actually a stronger gelling agent than gelatin in the sense of having to use less of it to get the same strength, but you need to use it properly. The most important property of agar is that unlike gelatin, which gives hydration at temperatures as low as 50° C, agar requires a temperature of 90° C. In other words, you need to heat the water all the way to a rapid boil before the agar will actually "activate". A light simmer is not enough.
The other notable property of agar is syneresis, which is the loss of moisture over time. Agar sets extremely fast compared to gelatin and above room temperature, but unless you combine it with a small amount of Locust bean gum, it will actually dry out. Otherwise, though, you can absolutely, definitely substitute agar-agar for gelatin if you actually get pure agar (I made the mistake of buying the "dessert agar" once, which is not the same thing) and hydrate/set it properly. In fact, the biggest concern with using agar as a substitute for gelatin is that you might end up with something too stiff, since gelatin produces a much softer gel.
Perhaps the closest hydrocolloid to gelatin in terms of its properties is iota type carrageenan. Here's a side-by-side comparison of the most important characteristics (this is all taken from the HRC):
Property | Gelatin | Carrageenan | Agar ------------------+-----------+-------------+--------- Thermoreversible | Yes | Yes | Yes Strength | Soft | Soft | Hard Elasticity | Elastic | Elastic | Brittle Shear Thinning | No | Yes | No Hydration | 50° C | 70° C | 90° C Setting Temp. | 15° C | 40-70° C | 35-45° C Setting Speed | Slow | Fast | Fast Melting Temp. | 25-40° C | 45-80° C* | 80-90° C Viscosity | Low | Medium | Low Gelling Conc. | 0.6-1.7% | 1.0-1.5% | 0.2% Syneresis | No | No | Yes
You should be able to see by this how much closer carrageenan is to gelatin; trouble is, it's difficult to find, and you have to get the right kind (the kappa type and other types have very different properties).
There's actually an even better type of carrageenan to use a gelatin substitute, if you can find it: It's called Ceambloom 3240 and it's specifically designed to be a gelatin replacement.
I'd like to also note for the record that the answer in your ochef link is not really appropriate for gelatin desserts that need to hold their shape. Xanthan gum is a fantastic and versatile hydrocolloid but (to the best of my knowledge) it does not "set" the way that gelatin, agar, or carrageenan do. It's more of a thickener/emulsifier/stabilizer, at its highest concentrations being used to produce foams (but not gels). It's often used to stabilize other gels/foams but I've never heard of it being used to create a gel on its own.
Guar gum is also largely just a thickener, that you could use a stabler replacement for corn starch or arrowroot, which is also mentioned in that answer. None of these are appropriate at all for gels (desserts), they are only useful as thickeners.
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Best Answer
Amchur doesn't give much of a flavor other than sour, at least, not in the amounts I use of it. It does have a bit of a distinctive aroma, but really, to me, it is just a fairly neutral sour flavor.
The easiest, most neutral substitute would be citric acid powder. Unfortunately, they don't usually give concentration/strengths on the packaging, but comparing Ball Citric Acid for Canning to the powdered amchur from the Indian store, it's pretty close. I think the citric acid tastes a tiny bit lemony, but not enough to make a difference.
Also, the amchur powder I buy is generally quite finely ground, and the citric acid is generally in crystals. If you are doing something like a spice blend (e.g., chat masala powder) you would probably want to grind the crystals up to match the texture of the rest of the spices.
Depending on what you're making, there are quite a few substitutions, but most of them would be more obscure than (or at least as obscure as) the amchur, and all would be less neutral. Also, amchur is dry, so adding something liquid might affect your recipe. (Easy to adjust if you are adding to something liquid, of course.)
In many Indian dishes, most of the Indians I know simply do use lemon juice when they want to make something sour, especially for northern dishes. This really is quite common, and nearly every Indian cook I know in the US has a large bottle of lemon juice in the fridge for every day use.
If you're making something South Indian, tamarind pulp or paste is often the souring agent of choice, but it is distinctly not neutral. It has a distinctive flavor and will also darken things (in a somewhat yellow-orange-brown range).
Some regions also use dried kokum fruit in the same way (classic Maharashtrian aamti, for example), but I would say it is even more distinctive than tamarind, and it also will darken it (with a dark grey-green-brown range of color).
For both kokum and tamarind, you soak the pulp in water and add the soaking water without the pulp to the dish. You can also usually find tamarind concentrate (a tarry paste) but I've never seen anything like that for kokum.
One more option I just thought of is using some other unripe or sour fruit. Amchur is made by powdering dried green mangoes. You can actually sometimes find dried green mangoes at places like Trader Joe's and if it is unsweetened, a small piece of that can certainly be used, but it seems that any fruit that is firm and sour should work, such as an unripe plum or a very tart apple. In that case, I would suggest either cooking with a small piece or two of the fruit in the sauce (if there is one) and removing it later or you could try to crush it and press some juice out. The problem here would be in figuring out the correct amount to add, but I think you could start from the dried-to-fresh conversion rates for herbs.