Katori
A katori is the small bowl used across Indian households to serve dal, curry, curd and vegetables; a standard one holds roughly 150 ml, though real ones range from about 100 to 250 ml.
The katori is the unit Indian food is actually served in, and it is the single most useful household measure for logging an Indian meal. It is also not standardised, which is the whole problem and the whole solution.
Why the variation matters
Dietary guidance in India commonly assumes a katori of about 150 ml. Steel katoris sold in shops run from roughly 100 ml to 250 ml, and the deep ones in many homes hold more than that. A dal logged as "one katori" can therefore be off by more than half, in either direction.
Calibrating yours
Fill your usual katori with water and pour it into a measuring cup. That is your katori, in millilitres, permanently. If it holds 200 ml and the reference figure is per 150 ml, multiply by 1.33 and stop thinking about it.
For thicker preparations, weigh instead: fill the katori as you normally would with dal, put it on a scale, and note the grams. Once.
Why this beats switching to grams
Because you will keep using the katori at dinner either way. Calibrating the unit you already use costs twenty minutes once; converting every meal into grams costs two minutes a day forever, and that is the cost people stop paying.
स्रोत
- 1.Indian Food Composition Tables 2017 — ICMR–National Institute of Nutrition
- 2.ICMR–National Institute of Nutrition — Indian Council of Medical Research
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- How to count calories in home-cooked food
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- How to calculate the calories in a recipe you cooked
A worked example from a real pot of dal: count the raw ingredients, add the fat, divide by real servings, save the number. Fifteen minutes once per recipe.