Home made Mukhwaas(mouth freshner)

Every Indian restaurant serves this at the end of a meal. Mukh means mouth and waas means smell.

Some restaurants serve slightly roasted fennel seeds with small sugarcane cubes while others serve it with candied cumin seeds and sesame seeds.

Mukhwaas not only helps in controlling bad breath, it also helps in digestion.

My last visit to an Indian restaurant got me thinking...Why not try making this at home? 

I am a person who likes to try out a lot of stuff at home. Lol. I should hang a board outside my kitchen which says ' Do not disturb; experiment going on;.

I tried making mukhwas by mixing fennel seeds and small sugarcane cubes. It was ok but the taste of the raw fennel seeds would deter me from having it :(.

So what to do next? Google of course...

I googled and found a million recipes on the net. Black sesame seeds, white sesame seeds, flax seeds, rose petal jam, coriander seeds etc etc a lot of stuff goes into making mukhwas ...phew; 

Finally, I made mukhwas out of what I had at home.

Fennel seeds - 2 cups

White sesame seeds - 1 cup

Lemon juice - half of a lemon 

salt - 1/2 tsp

water - 2 tbsp

Add salt into the lemon juice; add water and mix well. Pour this mixture into the fennel seeds and mix well. The fennel seeds will be wet. Leave it undisturbed for 5 minutes. Then dry roast the fennel seeds.The fennel seeds will crackle when they are roasted well.  After that dry roast the sesame seeds. The sesame seeds will roast faster than the fennel seeds, so you need to be extra careful. Mix  the roasted fennel and sesame seeds and home made mukhwas is ready. 

And it tastes good too. 

Yep, taste matters.