Food Recipes Blog: Indian Veg, Non-Veg, Breakfast, Snacks & Fasting Recipes

Soak the kidney beans for 6 to 8 hours, then drain and discard the soaking water. Raw or undercooked kidney beans contain a natural toxin that causes severe stomach upset, so boil them hard for at least 10 minutes and cook until completely soft; a pressure cooker works well. Do not cook rajma at a low temperature or in a slow cooker. The full method is in this Punjabi rajma masala recipe.

Boil the lentils with whole spices until soft, then make a separate masala of tomatoes, green chillies and spices, and finish with a tadka of cumin, garlic and asafoetida in hot oil or ghee. Combining the boiled dal with the roasted masala, rather than cooking everything together, gives the dhaba flavour. Try dhaba-style urad dal or khadi masoor dal.

Cool cooked rice quickly and refrigerate it within about an hour; leaving it at room temperature lets bacteria that survive cooking multiply. Eat it within one to two days and reheat it only once, until it is steaming hot all the way through. This applies to pulao, tehri and biryani, such as this north Indian veg biryani.

Navratri fasting allows sabudana (tapioca pearls), kuttu (buckwheat) flour, singhara (water chestnut) flour, rajgira (amaranth), potatoes, sweet potatoes, most fruits, milk and curd, and rock salt (sendha namak) in place of table salt. Grains such as wheat and rice, lentils, onion and garlic are avoided. Customs vary by family and region, so check any ingredient list against your own practice. Browse the fasting recipes.

The most common cause is temperature: the batter needs roughly 25–30°C for 8–12 hours, so it ferments poorly in an air-conditioned room or in winter. Other causes are too little urad dal, over-grinding which heats the batter, or iodised salt. Keep the batter somewhere warm, such as a switched-off oven with the light on. See how to make idli dosa batter with tips.

Make a stiff dough with cold water and rest it for 20–30 minutes. Fry on a low to medium flame, around 140–150°C, for the first several minutes so the pastry cooks through before browning. Frying too hot browns the outside and leaves the inside raw; frying too cool makes them absorb oil.

Cook onions, tomatoes and a little cashew paste into a smooth, well-fried gravy, then add butter, cream and kasuri methi at the end with the paneer. Adding butter and cream off a high flame keeps the gravy smooth. The step-by-step version is in this paneer butter masala recipe.

Realistic five-minute options are poha if the flattened rice is soaked while the tempering heats, besan chilla, curd rice, a quick coriander or coconut chutney with leftover idli, or a fruit and nut bowl. Dishes needing fermentation, slow cooking or dough resting cannot genuinely be made in five minutes, whatever a recipe title claims. More ideas in 5-minute recipes.

For deep frying, choose an oil with a high smoke point such as groundnut, rice bran or refined sunflower. For tempering and everyday sabzis, mustard oil suits northern and eastern dishes, coconut oil suits Kerala cooking, and ghee suits richer preparations. Extra-virgin olive oil is unsuitable for Indian frying because its smoke point is too low for tadka.

Many of the dishes on this page are also available with Hindi instructions on the Hindi edition of BlogShog, including rajma masala, urad dal, biryani, chole bhature and chicken curry.