Easy Onion Tomato Raita in 5 minutes!

This delicious onion tomato raita recipe comes together in just a few minutes and is a great side for biryani, pulao, or your favorite curry. The secret ingredient is toasted cumin which I show you how to quickly make with a shortcut.

Why you’ll love it:

• It’s quick to make, no tempering needed.
• The toasted cumin really elevates it.
• It’s healthy.
• It’s vegetarian.
• It’s a no-effort side when preparing several dishes for a tasty Indian meal.
• It can be prepared well ahead of time.
• It tastes even better the longer it sits.
• Don’t like tomatoes? Just leave them out for onion raita.

Try serving it alongside this one-pot vegetarian biryani or a tasty curry like chickpea spinach curry, creamy black bean curry, or Indian-style tofu curry. It even tastes great with plain steamed basmati rice!

Ingredients and substitutions

This is a really simple raita recipe so there are not too many substitutions to be made and the quality of the ingredients is pretty important. Take a look at the photo below to make sure you have the correct ingredients, and then scroll down under it to see any ingredient or substitution recommendations.

Tomatoes: Make sure to use nice very ripe tomatoes as unripened ones will make your raita sour. If the tomatoes you have aren’t as ripe as you’d like, you can add a little sugar to taste to balance the flavors. Use between three to four medium-sized tomatoes. You can also omit them to make plain onion raita.

Cayenne: This raita is very mild so no need to omit the ground cayenne pepper. If you don’t have any you can substitute with another nice red chilli pepper powder (not chili powder for making chili con carne), I particularly like Kashmiri chilli powder. Don’t substitute with chili flakes.

Onion: I prefer to use red onion as it’s a little milder but you can use any other type if you prefer or don’t have any red onion to hand.

Cilantro: Also called coriander leaves. I don’t recommend omitting or substituting this as it adds a ton of flavor.

Water: You need this to thin the yogurt to the correct consistency.

Black pepper: Use preground black pepper, the finely powdered version that comes in jars. freshly ground black pepper is too strong and the flakes are too big.

Black salt: Also known as kala namak, it has a lovely strong taste, almost egg-like. Do try and get it (you can also use it in my masala corn recipe) but if not substitute it with regular (fine) table salt.

Cumin: I use ground cumin and quickly toast it, but if you don’t have any ground cumin you can toast whole seeds and then grind them (in a coffee bean grinder for example, or with a mortar and pestle). Don’t omit the cumin and make sure you toast it.

Yogurt: Use full-fat unsweetened natural yogurt (dahi or curd). You can also use Greek yogurt or Fage but you might have to thin it a little more with water.

How to toast cumin

First off, don’t skip this step. I HIGHLY recommend toasting cumin, it completely changes the taste and it gets rid of that slightly claggy after taste it tends to have.

Secondly, most recipes that use toasted cumin (bhuna jeera) call for the whole seeds to be toasted and then ground because it’s really easy to burn cumin that’s already been ground, but I never do.

You can totally toast ground cumin, just be mindful of a few things.

Step one, add the ground cumin to a dry, cold non-stick pan (this will stop it from suddenly burning if the temperature is too high). Do not use any oil. See the left image below.

Step two set the pan to heat on medium-high. As soon as you can smell the cumin toasting, shake the pan or use a spatula to move around the ground cumin.

Do this every twenty seconds or so until the cumin has darkened to a medium-brown color (see the image on the righthand side above). Not dark brown, not black, medium-brown. It should only take between a minute to two minutes to taste the cumin.

Step three tip the toasted cumin out of the pan straight away into a small bowl (or the bowl you have the raita ingredients in). If you leave the cumin in the pan, even if you take it off the heat the residual heat could darken and toast it even more and make it bitter.

Check out the colors of the cumin in the image below to see what color your toasted cumin should be.

As you can see it’s pretty simple and fast to toast ground cumin. Of course, if you prefer you can toast it the traditional way by toasting whole cumin seeds until darkened and then grinding them. McCormick also sell pre-roasted ground cumin.

How to make it

This is a very quick easy recipe to make but I’ve included some photos here and extra instructions in case you’re unsure.

First, toast your cumin following the instructions above. While the cumin is toasting, finely chop the onion and cilantro and add to a bowl. Seed and finely chop the tomatoes and add to the bowl as well (image one below).

Add all the other ingredients (yogurt, water, cayenne, black pepper, black salt, and toasted cumin) and whisk everything together, beating until the yogurt is really smooth and has incorporated the water and everything is well distributed (image two above).

You can eat it as it straight away but I highly recommend refrigerating for at least an hour to enable the flavors to marinate. If entertaining, you can sprinkle some extra cayenne pepper or add sliced onions and extra cilantro on top for garnish.

Enjoy!

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