Indian Recipes
345 recipes found
Garam Masala Yogurt Dip
I'd hardly consider this a recipe, it's so simple and easy. But, it's one of my favorite dips, especially for sweet potato wedges or chips. - fiveandspice
Curry Dip
It's a tad embarrassing to submit this curry dip recipe. It contains only three cheap and accessible ingredients and requires less than five minutes to make.
Chai Masala
Sweetened, spiced hot tea is sold all over India by chai wallahs, or tea sellers. Chai masala refers to the spice blend used to make masala chai, the spiced beverage. This version, which is adapted from “Street Food of India” by Sephi Bergerson, is made with black tea, fresh ginger, green cardamom pods, milk and sugar. Make it your own by adding cinnamon, cloves, pepper, fennel or star anise.
Murg Malai Kebab
While dining at the Tamarind Tribeca in Manhattan, I had a terrific kebab of tender, marinated chicken breast, zapped judiciously with spice. It was enough to give pause to all those, including me, who consider chicken breast a boring blank slate. The restaurant does not serve the chicken on skewers, as one might expect for a kebab. But I found that using them greatly simplified turning the chicken while it cooked.
Cardamom Chai
As a purebred teas drinker, I was skeptical about Cardamom Chai and its maelstrom of spices and blast of sugar. I tried this recipe and it became a favorite.
Masala Winter Squash
Salmon and Crab Cakes
Peas With Garam Masala
Steamed Cod With Coconut Chutney
Garam Masala With Nutmeg
Spicy Mussels With Indian Seasonings
Roasted Cardamom Garam Masala
Hara Masala Murgh (Green Masala Chicken)
As is the case with every South Asian dish, variations of hara masala murgh abound. In the south of India, fresh desiccated coconut is used in place of yogurt, which is a common ingredient in the northern parts of Pakistan and India. The stalwarts of the dish across regions are copious amounts of fresh cilantro and mint — hence its name hara masala, which means green masala. In Lahore, it is commonly found on restaurant menus, and its peppery herbaceousness is a welcome reprieve from the tomato-onion gravies typical in Punjabi cooking. This version uses thinly sliced chicken breast. It also skips over the tedium of grinding almonds in favor of using almond butter. These two shortcuts mean a quicker cooking time and a creamy texture.
Chicken Breasts With Curry
Here, standard weeknight chicken breasts are transformed into a dish that's fragrant and spicy. It's very easy to prepare: just make a quick stew of butter, onions, celery, garlic, apple, tomatoes and curry powder. Blend that together in a food processor until it forms a thick sauce, then combine with chicken breasts that have been lightly browned. Simmer until heated through, and enjoy with a snowy pile of rice. It beats takeout curry by a mile.
Fast Tandoori Chicken
Here’s a dead-simple weeknight meal that Mark Bittman came up with at the dawn of the century for fast tandoori chicken – chicken quickly marinated in yogurt and spices, then run under the broiler for less than 10 minutes. The whole process takes about an hour, but the active cooking time is around 20 minutes in total, and it makes for a delicious family meal when served with Basmati rice and some sautéed spinach.
Kerala Roadside Chicken
In the south Indian state of Kerala, a street stall selling food is called a thattukada, and one of the most well-known dishes served is something called chicken fry, or thattu chicken. The chef Asha Gomez, who grew up in the Kerala port city of Trivandrum and now lives in Atlanta, took that street chicken and adapted it into a quick-cooking recipe that relies on coconut oil for crispness, and curry leaves, ginger and garlic for flavor. It gets its heat and color from Kashmiri chile powder, a fruity pepper used in many Indian dishes. It’s worth seeking out the pepper online, or at a market that caters to Indian shoppers, where you can also find the fresh curry leaves that are key to this dish. Ms. Gomez serves it with the flaky paratha that’s unique to Kerala, but any flatbread, or even rice, works well. It’s also a great dish to set out as a nibble with drinks, as they do in the toddy shops of southern India.
Cauliflower Chaat for One
This recipe for a single portion of cauliflower chaat comes from the chef Anita Lo. It gets its flavor from store-bought chaat masala, a South Asian seasoning tangy with dried mango and black salt. The recipe doubles easily, but if you’re cooking for one, pick a small head of cauliflower and use about half of it. Use the rest to make pickled cauliflower, or sauté it in the same way and then take the seasoning in a different direction.
Pressure Cooker Chicken Korma
Flavored with cardamom and saffron-infused cream, then garnished with golden raisins and slivered almonds, chicken korma is a delicate and elegant dish. This version, by the cookbook author Madhur Jaffrey, is quickly made in an electric pressure cooker. You can substitute chicken breasts here, as long as you buy them still on the bone. Boneless chicken is apt to overcook. Serve this over basmati rice to soak up the rich, creamy sauce.
Green Masala Chicken
One of the first things I learned about Dr. Jyotsna Mhatre, my mother-in-law and a psychiatrist from Mumbai who moved to the United States in 1974, was that she is an astonishingly good cook. The first time I went to her house, she put out a giant platter of herbaceous lamb kebabs with chutneys for dipping. The platter was meant to be overgenerous and welcoming, but my cousin and I gobbled up every single bite. Dr. Mhatre, whom I call Aai (Marathi for mother), came up with this quick, saucy stir-fry inspired by the bright flavors of kharouni, a sour-spicy-sweet shrimp and unripe mango dish she grew up eating. Many Indian American home cooks use jarred ginger and garlic pastes because they’re convenient, and they incorporate nicely for a smooth sauce. You can find them, as well the chutneys called for here, at any South Asian market, as well as online. Marinating tenderizes the chicken and rounds out the flavors, but it’s entirely optional. Aai sometimes swaps in peeled shrimp for the chicken, and tofu or chickpeas work well as vegetarian options.
Bombay Frittata
The writer Nik Sharma reimagines the spiced Indian omelettes his mother used to make him in his Mumbai childhood with this frittata, drawn from his first cookbook, “Season.” It incorporates garam masala, red-pepper flakes, onions and fresh herbs into the egg mixture, which is sprinkled with paneer and stuck in the oven for about 25 minutes. The pop of garam masala and the red-pepper flakes give each bite a nice jolt. This one is even better the next day.
Jackfruit Sabzi
This recipe for a simple jackfruit sabzi comes from the British chef Romy Gill, who adapted much of her Punjabi family’s vegetarian home cooking for her book “Zaika: Vegan Recipe from India.” In Burnpur, where Ms. Gill grew up, jackfruit grew wild on the trees around her home, and her mother worked with an oiled knife to take apart the heavy, unwieldy fruit. But in England, where she lives now, Ms. Gill reaches for canned jackfruit. Make sure to pick vegetal, unripe jackfruit in brine — rather than sweet, ripe jackfruit in syrup — then drain the pieces, breaking up any large ones until bite-size, and add them to the pan. Serve the sabzi with rice, roti, or, as Ms. Gill often does for her daughters, rolled up in a big, tender wrap.
Roasted Mango or Banana Lassi
Like other South Floridians, the chef Niven Patel of Ghee Indian Kitchen in Miami has access to fresh, locally grown, exceptionally flavorful varieties of bananas and mangoes he can ripen to perfection. Elsewhere in the country, that’s not the case: In fact, Mr. Patel said, most Indian restaurants use a canned ripe Indian mango purée to remedy that problem. But by roasting the mangoes or bananas first with sugar and warm spices, you can get good flavor from fruit of any quality or ripeness. Mr. Patel makes his own yogurt, which gives this lassi a complex tartness that balances the sweet spiced fruit, but a very good-quality regular plain yogurt (as in not strained or Greek) is a fine stand-in. The mango yields a slightly thicker lassi than the banana; if you'd like, add a little extra milk to thin it out, tasting as you go to make sure you don't dilute the flavor.
Indian-Spiced Tomato and Egg Casserole
This dish, inspired by a traditional recipe from the Parsis (a group of Zoroastrians from Persia who settled in India sometime between the 8th and 10th centuries), is possibly one of the most fragrant and vivid casseroles you’ll ever see. It starts with a highly spiced tomato sauce flavored with mint, green chiles and ginger. The sauce is then poured over a layer of sliced cooked fingerling potatoes and baked. At the end of the cooking time, wells are made in the sauce and eggs cracked into them to finish baking. The result is a tomato-rich casserole with runny yolk over each pungent bite. Serve it for dinner or for brunch.
Chaat Party
The beauty of chaat — a category of tangy, sweet, fiery and crunchy Indian snacks — is that it’s built for customization. The only common denominator is that alchemy of flavor sensations, often driven by a combination of sweet-and-sour tamarind chutney, a bright herb chutney (like this cilantro-mint chutney or this green chile chutney) and cooling raita. Otherwise, base ingredients and toppings (and even those chutneys!) can all be interchanged. This spirit is the driving force behind Maneet Chauhan’s chaat party, from her cookbook, “Chaat” (Clarkson Potter, 2020), a choose-your-own-adventure spread that allows eaters to build a chaat suited to their tastes: More crunch! Less spicy! More sweet! More herbs! It’s entirely up to you. This is a great way to entertain, and also a quick, no-cook dinner. Use this list as a starting point for ingredients, but feel free to get creative. If you are able to get banana leaves, spread them out over the table before arranging everything else on top for a bright pop of color.