What is Raita?
Raita is South Asian-style whisked yogurt often made with spices and vegetables such as cucumbers, onion. It is versatile and serves as perfect accompaniment to many South Asian dishes such as biryani, pulao, and vegetarian curries (especially dry ones like this Mixed Vegetable Curry). Enter your email below and get it sent straight to your inbox. Plus, get recipes & tips every week! Raita harmoniously balances a meal: yogurt for cool and creamy acidity, vegetables for crunch and texture, and herbs for vibrance and freshness. Though restaurants will often serve this blended Mint Cilantro Raita (also called Dahi Chutney), this simple raita of mixed vegetables Raita is more common in South Asian homes. P.S. Prefer Raita sans yogurt? Try Kachumber Salad.
A Key Tip for Using Cucumber in Raita
I remember when I first saw my husband chop a cucumber. He cut off about half an inch from the stem and rubbed both parts against each other. He explained that he does it because his mom did it, and he’s not sure how it works but it’s supposed to remove bitterness. I thought it was a typical ‘grandma’s pot roast’ scenario. When you call mom to ask why she cuts the ends off the pot roast and she says because that’s the way grandma did it. You ask grandma only to find out she cut it off to fit it in her oven. But then I came to find out Julie Sahni in Classic Indian Cooking recommends the same trick – rub the stem end against the cucumber until a white film starts to build. Epicurious echoes this, explaining how cucurbitacins (a bitter compound) accumulate at the peels and ends. They suggest you cut off the ends before peeling it to avoid spreading the bitterness. If you’re able to find young Persian cucumbers, you likely won’t have the bitterness problem. But if you do, now you know how to remove it. It wasn’t just a weird thing my in-laws did after all.
How to make Raita
To make this raita: I remember googling how to make raita many years ago when I would always eyeball the salt and it would always be too much. So exactly how much salt do you need? And how many vegetables? Should the cucumber be peeled or unpeeled? I had questions. Here are some answers:
Here are some recipes that you can pair with Raita:
Instant Pot Chicken Pulao Pakistani Chicken Pulao (Yakhni Pulao) Chicken Biryani Chana Pulao and Aloo Ki Tikki Easy Spinach and Potato Curry (Aloo Palak) Pakistani Seekh Kebab Chapli Kabab
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