RECIPE: Rec: Yogurt with Cucumber Raita Recipe (Punjab - North India). Sooo good!

[florisandy]

This was the first raita I ever made and I made it tonight to go with tandoori chicken that I cooked last night.

The recipe mentions lemon juice in the paragraph but not in the ingredient list. I googled for a similar recipe using two cukes and two cups of yogurt and so I followed the one from All Recipes using 3 TBS. of lemon juice.

I went the extra step by laying the not-too-small cubed cucumber on paper towels after draining and let it sit in the fridge for 15 minutes. I used Stonyfield Farms’ Plain Whole Milk Yogurt that I also used to marinate the 15 drumsticks in (2 lb. container). I roasted the cumin seeds and crushed them in my mortar and pestle. The recipe looks like 1.5 tsp. but that’s too much as I realized later. One tsp. should be plenty. I sprinkled the raita with dried coriander that I had on hand.

I would not recommend making this recipe too far in advance but with just enough time to chill for a while as the cucumber surely would get too soggy.

This is definitely a keeper!

http://www.indianfoodsco.com/Recipes/Raita/Raita.htm

 

[dawnnys]

I just made this the other day. I started out with strained, fat-free plain yogurt

and waited until it was almost like yogurt cheese (overnight) but when I added the cucumbers (blotted dry) and garlic, it got very water again and it won't strain out anymore water. Did you have that problem? It's good, just a little watery.

Thanks for the link! I forgot about the lemon juice - that should give it even more zip! I see yours doesn't include garlic - mine did, and the garlic certainly adds a lot of bite! Maybe a little too much; next time I'll use a little less.

 

[florisandy]

Hi Dawn. I didn't strain my whole milk yogurt but just mixed it with a spoon and I

followed the recipe but blotted-dry (as you did) the medium-sized diced cucumbers. As I mentioned, and in other words, I don't recommend that raita be made too far in advance because of the inevitable time-released cuke sogginess factor.

However, there may be something about the whole milk yogurt that I used... It's 12:47 am now and I just had a bite of the raita in the fridge to test and the cucumbers are, believe it or not, still crunchy! Hmmmm, perhaps a closer look into the chemical composition of fat-free and strained plain yogurt might be warranted - LOL. Seriously though, I just tasted it tonight over 24 hours and the cukes are still crunchy (mind you, they're diced larger than what an Indian restaurant would serve) - contrary to what I've read about make-ahead raita.

 

[dawnnys]

Thanks Sandy. I shredded my cucumbers - the strange thing is that

there was hardly any liquid in the yogurt before I added the other things - in fact I thought I had strained it too long. Oh well, it tastes good, and it's almost gone anyway ) I like that site too.