In Ayurvedic Cooking, the cook should not taste the indian food before it is served.

In the West I doubt if many people could relate to not tasting the food while it's still on the stove. Typically one might think, "How will I know if it is done or properly cooked without tasting it first?"

Once the cooking starts, one cannot taste the food, nor should one try to enjoy the food being prepared even by smelling it. If it is enjoyed first by ourselves, it is no longer fit to offer to God.

I cook every day and never taste it before it is finished and offered and everyone tells me it tastes very good. One should have confidence in what he or she is doing to begin with.

Those who cannot see, hear better; and those who cannot hear, see better. At the loss of one faculty, nature gives more power to other faculties. If we refrain from tasting the food beforehand, then our ability to subtly experience what it will taste like will increase. One must learn to cook by feeling, not by tasting.

Cooking improves one's sense of smell, sight and touch respectively. The sense of taste is deliberately not used. The energy that would have been centered there may then flow into other sense organs, thus making them more receptive. By willfully abstaining from tasting, a cook improves his or her other senses such that they become more sensitive and efficient. I know a blind man who used to cook bread simply by listening to the sounds it made during the process of cooking.

Extract from "The Spirit of Cooking" Interview with Harish Johari by Thomas Beaudry for "Clarion Call", Volume 3 - Number 4, 1990.