How to make easy raita, or Indian yoghurt salad side dish.

Raita is an Indian yoghurt side dish, with a cooling effect. It is usually combined with vegetables to make a complete side dish for meals. I feel almost sheepish to even post this recipe here, because it’s so easy! I always make this whenever I have yoghurt knocking around in the fridge, and I never need to measure out ingredients.

I love raita so much! It’s a cooling, yet appetising dish that goes amazingly well to cut on any heaviness and spiciness that comes with the Indian food territory. Funnily enough, raita is not a must-have dish to include with your briyanis – at least not for our local hawker Indian stalls. Singapore-Indian food rarely includes raita as a must-have side. Our local hawker style Indian food or Mamak stalls would instead do a pickling of cucumbers and tomato ketchup and call it a day.

Try whipping a batch of easy raita and start having it with your briyanis and Indian curries, it will level up your mealtime!

What Yoghurt to use for Raita

ANY plain yoghurt. I remember when I first wanted to make this, recipes kept recommending greek yoghurt. Greek yoghurt is expensive, so eventually I had to do my own experimenting with cheaper “regular” yoghurt, and got literally the same results. You can also use curd.

Some plain yoghurt has sugar in it, and you can still use it in this recipe with no problems. Do not add sugar or else it might be too sweet – although personally I don’t mind a sweet raita either!

What Vegetables to use for Raita?

You can make the most basic raita with just yoghurt, onion and salt.

In this recipe, I used onion, green chillies and tomatoes – but really, raita works with so many vegetables! In fact my favourite salad dressing is to whip up this raita recipe sans vegetable, and mix it with some steamed chopped broccolis. Non-leafy ones would work best.

Cucumbers are a common vegetable used, but I rarely use it in my raita unless I need to get rid of cucumbers. With cucumbers you do need to go the extra step of squeezing out the liquid, or removing the soft middle core otherwise you will get a watery raita. Since my raita needs to be a fast and zero wait time process, I don’t enjoy using cucumbers.

How to make the BEST Raita

Do not serve this immediately. After mixing, pop it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes so the flavours can fully develop. I like to make this right at the beginning of my cooking process. Once I’m done with my main dishes, the flavours have had plenty of time to make friends with each other – it will taste even more amazing!

What to Serve this With:

Of course, this goes well with Indian food, especially heavily-spiced curry dishes. I love having raita with briyani, pulao, tikka masala, palak paneer and rogan josh.

Butter Chicken
Chicken Shawarma