Culinary Tips and tricks from Cool Seniors: How to thicken

I asked a group of senior citizens some help on cooking Sambar. Being a South Indian, I frequently make Sambar. But it is almost always very thin due to insufficient dal in it. How to thicken the Sambar was my problem. This query gave me a good number of tips from my friends summarized below: 1. Add teaspoonful of Rice floor, nicely dispersed in a little water; re-cook for a couple of minutes 2. If you have some cooked potatoes, then mash up one or two and add it to Sambar. Simmer on low heat for a couple of minutes 3. In the place of Rice floor you can use Chenna dal Powder also. 4. If you have a few pieces of bread, you may crush them with hands and add it to Sambar 5. A little of cooked rice may by be ground in a mixie and added. 6. Finely chopped onion may be added to improve consistency 7. If the Sambar if left as such for a few hours, clear, excess water would be at the top. Simply decant it off to get some Rasam! 8. Simply heat the Sambar for sufficiently long time to allow excess water to evaporate but not long enough for the whole of it to char away into nice activated carbon! 9. Of course if you have cooked dal readily available you may add this and re-cook. 10. Dont do anything. Use it for Idli Sambar session where you necessarily need only thin Sambar.