A Taste of India:
A unit plan for an exploration of the staple spices and ingredients of Indian Cuisine.
By Reid Anderson (andersonr at easternct dot edu)
| Topic | Herbs and Spices |
Objectives |
- Students will learn the names and flavors of common spices. - Students will build a typical Indian spice kit with informative labels. |
| Materials | - Small empty spice jars (clear film canister size plastic canisters). - Common supply of several Indian spices (enough to fill the student containers. - Sticky labels for the canisters (large enough to provide spice name and basic information about the spice). |
| Procedure | Working one spice at a time, have students fill their canister half full from the common supply. The students should taste a very small sample of the spice and provide adjectives to describe the taste of the spice. These adjectives can be summarized and students can be provided with the name of the spice to record on their sticky label, along with the description of the taste and a description of the look of the spice (red powder vs yellow pellets). The teacher can also provide further information (an example meal that uses that spice) for the students to record on the labels. The label can then be applied to the canister and the process repeated with the next spice. |
| Assessment | The teacher can build an generically labeled spice kit (using just numbers). This generic kit can be used to build a quiz for the students in which the teacher shows the spice to the students, allows them to sample the taste, and record their answers on a quiz sheet. Teachers can also provide the name of a typical meal with each spice as an alternative method for the students to form the connection to the name of the spice. |