South Indian food revolves around tamarind. It is used for sambars, rasams, chutneys, rice preparations, and pickles. Most Indian households keep it in some form, whole pods, a pressed block, or ready-made paste, and the question of where to store it properly comes up every season when the summer haul arrives. The short answer to whether you can store tamarind in a ceramic jar is yes. But the...

That’s a fair question. You have a ceramic jar sitting on your kitchen counter full of pickle, leftover dal, or something you want to preserve for a few days, and the freezer seems like the obvious next step. So, can you put ceramic jars in the freezer? The short answer is sometimes yes, but not by default, and not without knowing what you’re dealing with. So let’s break it...