I have tried making cucumber raita in the past by simply chopping cucumbers up and chucking them into a bowl of yogurt.
Easy peasy right? Well the raita always turned out a little water-logged and tasted far too soggy, quite the opposite of refreshing.
Fortunately, I found a recipe for cucumber raita some time ago which guarantees a raita infused with cucumber flavours and the perfect texture too.
The secret to a yummy bowl of raita isn’t any special ingredient, instead, it’s the additional methods involved in making it which results in a whole lot of difference.
Ingredients:
1 cucumber
400 grams of plain yogurt
A handful of mint leaves (optional)
Salt to tasteTools:
Muslin or cheesecloth (in my case, I bought bandage fabric from Daiso)
Grater
# – The ingredients and tools for making awesome cucumber raita.
# – First, grate the cucumber – skin, seeds, flesh and all into a bowl covered with muslin/cheesecloth/bandage fabric.
# – Grated cucumber.
# – Then gather the cloth together and squeeze all liquid into the bowl. Squeeze out as much liquid as possible.
# – Pure cucumber juice. What do you do with this green nectar of life? Drink it up of course!
# – Weigh out 400 grams of plain yogurt – 400 grams to one cucumber.
# – Dump in the now squeezed up cucumber bits.
# – Finely chop up the mint leaves.
# – Throw the mint leaves into the yogurt as well.
# – Add a pinch of salt to taste.
# – With a spoon, mix it all up. Stir and stir.
# – Cucumber raita, DONE! Garnish with a sprig of mint leaf if that’s your kind of thing.
While you can eat it straight, I like to chill it in the fridge for a couple of hours so that the cucumber has more time to flavour the yogurt. Serve it with curries or use as crisps/vegetable dips. Delicious!
