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A box of cloves …
August 23, 2007 | 41 Comments
Last week we received a question from pauaprincess - our dear friend from New Zealand. She asks:
What do you know about cloves? I use them for making my Christmas ham as decoration with an orange/brown sugar marinade but thats about all I use them for. What else can I do with them? I love the smell of cloves and I know oil of cloves is used for toothache but that’s about all I know. I’d like to make better use of my box of whole cloves because they tend to sit in the pantry till Christmas every year.
Although we have a few uses, we realised that we don’t know too much about cloves either. We thought we’d use this opportunity to find out how people use the cloves in their pantry.
Cloves have a sweet aroma and a pungent, astringent flavour.
All about cloves HERE.
They have a wide array of medicinal uses. (They are listed HERE) Most famously, to alleviate tootache. Clove oil contains eugenol, a natural pain killer and antibacterial.
Do not use cloves without first talking to your doctor if you have a bleeding or blood clotting disorder, or if you are taking any medicines to prevent or treat a blood clotting disorder. Cloves has been reported to affect blood clotting.
In pulaos, biryanis, and other rice dishes.
Heat a tablespoon of butter/oil/ghee (clarified butter), add a couple of cloves and green cardamoms lightly crushed, a stick of cinnamon, stir for a minute, then add your rice and water and cook as usual. You’ll have wonderful fragrant rice. Take the whole spices out while serving. (Other possible additions: bay leaf, mace, nutmeg, star anise, peppercorns, cumin) Or put the whole spices in a bundled up cheesecloth in the water and fish it out after the rice is cooked.
For festive meals, add an onion and some cashewnuts.
Check out Spicy Chilly‘s glorious Ghee Rice.
Cloves are an integral part of any Indian garam masala. Garam masala is a spice mix from northern India, used in many veggie and meat preparations.
Here are three garam masala recipes we love:
Kashmiri Garam Masala
Shaheen’s Biryani Masala
Balti-style Garam Masala
3. In jams and preserves. Check out this Cranberry-Clove Marmalade.
The tea masala we add to our morning cuppa has cloves. We’ve run out and started doing this instead:
For 2 mugs of tea (about 3 cups)
Take a piece of fresh ginger (the size of a date), two cloves, two green cardamoms and a fingernail sized piece of cinnamon. Crush these ligthly with a mortar and pestle or a rolling pin and add it to the water as it is boiling. Proceed to make tea (we add milk).
In curries and sauces. A recipe with cloves we highly recommend is Istu. It’s mild and appeals even to non-Indian palates. Here’s a chicken version.
As a mouth freshener. B’s mom used to pack this with her lunch box: one clove and two green cardamoms. The cardamoms cut the pungency of the cloves and provide a fresh aftertaste, while the cloves protect the gums and teeth with their antibacterial properties.
If your cloves have been sitting around for a long time, ‘wake’ them up in the microwave (15-20 seconds).
Filed Under: clove, vegetarian recipes
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41 Comments
How abt potato stew? don’t u make that?
Cloves are strong so even though I love it, have to surreptiously take it out of the curries before hub gets home and starts off.. there is something too strong in this curry.. did u put in the woodchips again?…u have covered the best uses!
the link is in the post. i call it stew and b calls it istu. we have chronicled our differences in that post! now i have a data point that someone who claims to be a full blooded mallu also calls it stew! thanks -jai
Hi Bee,
Just one more excellent use of clove that I have come to know about and use regularly,chewing a clove roasted in an iron pan gives almost instant relief from a dry hacking cough,the one that usually follows a viral throat infection.
Was a skeptic until I actually tried it.
Thanks Marietta.
In addition to providing relief from a cough (as Marietta said), it also helps in reducing the pain caused by a toothache.
Though not the severe i-can’t-stand-it-need-ibuprofen pain!
Maharashtrians use cloves in sweet rice too, such as
http://the-cooker.blogspot.com/2007/06/sakhar-sugar-bhaat.html
Good post Bee ;;) :horn: I liked the picture of the clove
Roast a few cloves and powder them. Add sufficient honey.Just keep on licking this mixture from time to time.This is my mom’s home remedy for cough.
Great pic.
Dunno how true this is but we do it anyway. If you want your mehndi to darken and last longer, warm some cloves on a tava and warm your hands over the tava. Do this when the mehndi has dried but has not been scraped off. Do this after rubbing some eucalyptus oil (I think) into your palms.
I second Manisha. We use it to darken mehendi the same way. Coves in stew? A bit strong no? We love adding just clove powder to our tea instead of all masalas together. Just a pinch gives a great flavour and is helluva wake up call!
Cloves also help with nausea, especially the type caused during traveling, so it helps to have a few cloves along with some green cardamom in the handbag.
In cooking, I love cloves in Gujarati kadhi besides the dishes that you have already covered.
Bee dear nice note on the use of cloves,never knew MW can jazz up a sleeping clove
>
..or wallet, or pocket. Jai might accuse me of discrimination, but then I have hardly ever heard of men feeling nauseous.
Here’s something from the Victorian period and earlier, that I used to do often: make a pomander to set in your linen drawer to scent your clothes: take an orange or an apple (pom=apple, but oranges, being rarer and pricier, were considered finer) and stud the entire surface tightly with whole cloves. (the cloves preserve the fruit as it dries). Tie a decorative ribbon around it, in four lengthwise divisions. Lasts a couple years.
Bee & jai…very informative post. Can I use some of this material when I write about Clove in my “Know your Ingredient” series?
Srivalli
http://www.cooking4allseasons.blogspot.com
sure. – b.
Also when you have a sore throat, you just keep one each on both the cheek and sleep…next morning you will never know what hit you!
Srivalli
http://www.cooking4allseasons.blogspot.com
Clove for a bad tooth, especially after eating all those sweet goodies :nono: in the latter part if the year
. muhahaha
beyond the pantry, i insert clove sticks in my silk saree stack – the better alternative to moth balls. i think cloves are used as closet freshners almost universdally.
people also use it to maintain their precious carpets. sprinkle some ground clove and let it stand for 30 minutes to an hour on carpets, brush off and welcome to bacteria free carpets.
these are my uses and already mentioned above by some
- to have darker mehndi (after applying eucalyptus oil), toast some cloves on a tava and let the fumes warm your hands
- yes when a sore throat is coming on… put 2 cloves and 2 whole back pepper in your cheek and let it sit for a few hours, throat irritation will disappear
- otherwise just have clove and tulasi in chai for another throat medication
- i made the orange clove pomander once for the cupbaord… initially the citrusy-clovy smell was so strong, and later it gave the clothes a nice mellow smell
thanks, rachna. i added cloves and tulsi to my chai today. tulsi is great in chai. – b.
Thanks so much Jai and Bee, I knew my cloves were better than for just studding the ham! I make a marinade with orange juice, brown sugar and manuka honey to glaze it, which tastes absolutely delicious with the cloves, the sweetness of the sugar/honey and tang of the orange compliments the cloves. I love the idea of using it in the closet and carpet too, I have boxes of them because I can never find the box from last Christmas when I am glazing the ham :huh:
I have started to appreciate clove more… It has such a distint warm fragrance that is so needed in cooking…
My goodness….. you guys are like chalta firta encyclopedia!!
Apart from all those mentioned, I keep 1-2 with my marriage sarees, they are supposed to maintain the sarees in good condition for a long time! Every yr when I go back and see my sarees, I also get a good clove-y smell than what you normally get from clothes which have been packed and un touched for yrs.
Cloves can be used in sweets such as laddu, sweet pongal and kesari. I add a cardamom while making ghee to give it a subtle cardamom-y flavor. Or you can use a clove instead, like in nitter kibbeh
The hyperlink didn’t go through in my previous comment.
Nitter Kibbeh: http://www.elook.org/recipes/african/100.html
Sorry for glutting your comment section. Meant to add this as well : loved your microwave and Botswana posts.
alright – going round the table here and summarizing other uses of cloves
- sore throat/cold/cough
- nausea
- mehendi
- scenting / preserving clothes {pomander pel and rachna – wow ; will try that will lemon}
- bacteria free carpets
- in sweets or make nitter kibbeh {mamatha – love ethiopian food tx for the link} and add it to make the sweets
thanks all !
–jai
I use cloves in most desserts ,specially in Pumpkin pie!! YUM!!
Lovely post! I agree…while I love cloves and use them often (all the uses you already mentioned), one packet lasts FOREVER.
I enjoyed reading all the suggestions in the comments. Lakshmi’s idea of freshening up carpets with clove powder is a very useful one.
this is so informative
Bee,
Here I am..:no:…Absolutely speechless…!!!for honouring a humble blogger like me!!!!Tight Hugs to you,dear!!! ;;)
honour? how? and who is a ‘humble blogger’? define please, bharathy darling. see, if you post a comment here, you get asked a lot of questions.
– b.
I use it to keep my sarees safe (actually ma & mil do that).
clove tadka in ghee for dals works very well
:bow:
I was going to write an actual comment but all those smileys distracted me and I forgot what I had to say. So,
:hmm: :hmm:
it’s not you. it’s a spooky plugin we have.. anyone who tries to comment as ‘anonymous’ is made to forget what they came to say. :devil: – b.
What about people who forget to type in the identity info? Not only did I forget what I was going to type, I also forgot to type in my name. :hammer: :fume: :hammer:
I can;t stop now. Don’t care about spooky plugins anymore.
:yes: :dance:
:yak: :bruised: :sleep:
somebody stop me…
Great site! I use cloves in my flour canisters to aviod the ever irritating small bugs that plauge the indian pantry. I normally put my flour in ziploc bags and place the bags in the canister and drop some cloves in the canister.
Very informative post. I can’t think of any more uses.
I love that picture! I use cloves to kick up halwa and other Indian desserts. They are great paired with dates and chopped nuts to make date ladoos. We make a dessert called “Haigreeva” which is cooked chana dal mixed with jaggery, coconut, ghee and cloves. Hmm, maybe I should post it on my blog (yeah, make it first
).
Great post!
This spice is integral to a lot of our cooking in the Caribbean. One of my upcoming columns for Christmas looks at the necessity of this spice to make the holidays what it is.
Sorry, I meant to say great job on the info. :embarrass
i love cloves
especially in rice and chai. and with Tulasi, its just phenomenal! and oh, they are good even for toothache, because of their anelgesic action
.
Good one, folks
.
Very informative post! Thanks for the loads of clove uses..One other use which I have heard of is that clove oil applied to scalp helps in hair growth and addresses hair loss issues…
Very informative post! You did not miss any use of clove :bow:
hi!
I am doing a schoolproject about the medical use of clove and need some photos. I am asking you if I can use the picture on your website? is it yours?
love!
anna
please use the contact form to send us an e-mail. there’s a free photo here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ClovesDried.jpg
i did not feel like reading all the responses, but one of my favorites that were not mentioned are clove cigarettes. i think they may have been banned though for some reason? i have found a place that still sells them and i just smoked one about 10 minutes ago. they offer way more of a buzz than normal tobacco products, possibly because of the cloves?