Flavorful North Indian Dry Potato and Pea Curry Recipe

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Cooking With Anadi

12K subscribers · potatoes and peas broken into chunks, spiced warm and dry

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About North Indian Potato and Pea Curry

This Indian potato and pea curry, known as aloo matar sabji in Hindi, this curry is a “dry” mixture of potatoes and peas, as the name suggests! “Dry” refers to the fact that there is no gravy or sauce to this aloo matar sabji. Furthermore, our Indian potato and pea curry is perfect for those following a variety of diets, making it accessible to everyone. As I mention in my free motivational guide to explore your potential in the kitchen, Make Cooking Fun!, using what you already have on hand can be an excellent source of inspiration for cooking! This Indian potato and pea curry recipe will definitely show you how two ingredients can be full of amazing flavors, and if you’re like me, you’ll definitely become addicted to this mixture! I encourage you to get started on your cooking journey today by signing up to my email newsletter so you’ll get all of my latest recipes sent directly to your inbox, plus my two free guides will help show you how much fun cooking at home can be!

Be sure to watch the video at the bottom to follow along so you can see how easy it is to make your new favorite Indian potato and pea curry! If you’re not already, I would really appreciate it if you could please subscribe to my YouTube, and don’t forget to press the bell button so you’re notified when all of my new video recipes go live! Let’s get cooking!

Why You’ll Love This Indian Potato and Pea Curry Recipe!

• Simple ingredients: The stars of this aloo matar recipe are potatoes and peas, but these two really go a long way to make a mighty delicious mixture! Potatoes and peas are cheap and easily accessible ingredients, and combined with a couple of spices, they really shine to make a memorable dish that you’ll want to make again and again!
• Quick and easy: As my family would make this delicious combination before road trips, it had to be fast and easy to make! If you have lots of extra boiled potatoes prepared, then the rest of this dish only takes a matter of minutes to get together in just a few steps.
• Suitable for many diets: This Indian potato and pea curry recipe is gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, vegetarian, vegan, and low FODMAP. It is also low in calories and high in fiber from the peas.
• Customizable: You can adjust the spice level based on your preference. Typically, I don’t make this very spicy, so it’s suitable to those sensitive to spice. However, if you want more heat, then you can certainly do that!
• Versatile: There are so many ways to enjoy this aloo matar recipe! Check out plenty of serving suggestions later on in this post!

Tools Needed to Make Aloo Matar

• Instant Pot
• Cutting board
• Sharp chef’s knife
• Spatula
• Non-stick pan
• Olive oil dispenser

Ingredients Needed to Make Dry Aloo Matar

All ingredients and instructions can be found in the FULL PRINTABLE RECIPE CARD by scrolling to the bottom of this post or by pressing the “Jump to Recipe” button. The recipe card will also allow you to scale the ingredient quantities based on how many portions you’re looking to make, and you can save the recipe for later.

• Potatoes: I used Yukon gold yellow potatoes for the best flavor, but any potatoes will work here.
• Olive oil: Alternatively, you can use ghee if you want the flavor from it. However, if you use ghee, then this dry aloo matar recipe will no longer be vegan.
• Cumin seeds:
• Ginger: Fresh ginger root, chopped.
• Green chilies: Thinly sliced.
• Ground cumin
• Ground coriander
• Turmeric: Optional, but recommended
• Garam masala
• Peas: You can use either fresh or frozen peas.
• Salt: A key ingredient that we can’t forget to include to bring out all the wonderful flavors!

How to Make Aloo Matar

To cook the potatoes on the stovetop, bring a pot of water to a boil, season with a tablespoon of salt and boil the potatoes until fork tender.

To cook the potatoes in the Instant Pot, thoroughly rinse potatoes and scrub any dirt off. Insert the trivet in the Instant Pot, place potatoes on the trivet and pour between 1/4 to 1/3 cups of water over potatoes.

Heat a pan on medium heat and add olive oil. Then, add cumin seeds and sauté until reddish brown.

Add ginger and green chilies and cook off the rawness of the ginger.

Add in all of the dried spices except salt. Sauté for about a minute until the spices have lightly roasted. Add in boiled potatoes and peas.

Break down and stir potatoes and mix well until the mixture comes together (Note: You do not need to completely mash the potatoes, some chunks adds texture and flavor).

Set it aside to cool down. Enjoy!

Tips to Make a Super Delicious Aloo Matar

• Take care to cook the spices out until they are toasted and fragrant for maximum flavor. In case you notice the pan is too hot, use a splash or two of water to prevent the spices from burning and turning bitter.
• If using fresh peas, peel and boil them in hot water until tender before adding them in along with the peeled potatoes.
• Small chunks are great in this mixture and add to the texture. Either use a masher or a wooden spoon to get the desired consistency.

How to Serve Aloo Matar

There are plenty of ways you can serve your aloo matar sabji! Here are a couple of ideas to create a new combination every time!

• Sandwich: One of my classics. You can either spread the mixture on bread and enjoy it open-faced, or spread the aloo matar sabji on one slice of bread, close your sandwich, and toast it. Some cheese inside is also delicious!
• Roti: Eat it with your hands sabji style or roll up the aloo matar mixture to make it a wrap.
• Paratha: White or classic triangular paratha, and you can enjoy your aloo matar the same way as the rotis!
• Puri: I love making rolls with this mixture! This was a classic road trip staple!
• Bhature: Enjoy it like puri, but bhature are even larger and puffier!
• Naan: As a side with your naan or you can stuff this filling in naan!
• Rice: Enjoy with some Steamed Basmati Rice, or even a Light and Healthy Vegetable Pulao, Turmeric Rice, or Jeera Rice will be excellent.
• Dal: Mixed Dal or Chana Dal will be perfect with this aloo matar sabji!

No Onion, No Garlic, No Tomato

Read the ingredient list and what is missing is more striking than what is there. There is no onion in this at all, red onion or otherwise, no garlic and no ginger garlic paste, no tomato puree and no cream. For a North Indian dish that is an unusually short list, because almost every curry you have eaten starts with onion and tomato cooked down into a base.

This belongs instead to the no-onion-no-garlic tradition, which is a real and widely cooked style in Indian cuisine rather than an omission. It is the way many households cook on fasting days and in satvik kitchens, and the point of it is that nothing hides behind a gravy. The flavor here is ginger, green chilies, cumin and garam masala sitting directly on the potatoes, and if any of those are stale you will taste it.

It is also why this is a dry sabzi rather than a curry in the saucy sense. With no tomato puree and no cream there is no gravy to speak of, which changes how you serve it: this goes with flatbread, picked up rather than spooned over rice. And there is no red chili powder or cayenne either. The heat is 2 fresh green chilies, which is a brighter, sharper heat than powder gives you, and it fades faster.

The Tempering, and Why the Potatoes Are Boiled First

Start with the whole spices. One teaspoon cumin seeds goes into the hot oil on its own and you wait for the seeds to change color and sizzle before anything else joins them. That is the tadka, and doing it in a kadai or a large skillet is the same either way. Finely chopped ginger and the green chilies follow into that infused oil. Whole spices into fat first, ground spices after, is the order behind most Indian cooking and it is doing real work: the fat carries flavor in a way water never will.

The ground spices come next and only briefly, because they scorch in seconds where whole seeds are forgiving. That is 1/2 teaspoon coriander powder, 1/2 tsp of ground cumin, 1/4 teaspoon turmeric which the recipe marks optional, and 1/2 tsp of garam masala. Note that garam masala is a finishing blend, so it is there for aroma rather than to be cooked hard. If you want the more traditional version, ghee is the listed swap for the olive oil and it suits this style of cooking better.

You will also notice no mustard seeds and no curry leaves. Those belong to a South Indian tempering and would pull the dish somewhere else entirely; this is a North Indian one. And the potatoes arrive already boiled and peeled, which is the whole reason the cook time is 10 minutes and there is no pressure cooker or quick release involved anywhere. Boil them the day before and this becomes a genuinely fast weeknight dish.

Variations, Serving and What Is In It

Serve it with flatbread, roti or paratha, which is what a dry potato dish is built for. For a variation, sweet potato in place of some of the potato works and brings its own sweetness against the chilies, and a drained tin of chickpeas stirred through adds protein and turns it into a fuller meal. Other firm vegetables like cauliflower behave the same way in the pan. If you like this, bombay potatoes is its drier, spicier cousin, while matar paneer is what you get keeping the peas and swapping the potato for paneer in a tomato gravy.

Two finishing touches are worth adding even though neither is in the recipe: a scatter of fresh coriander leaves and a squeeze of lemon juice off the heat. Both lift a dry sabzi considerably, and the acid in particular does what the missing tomato would otherwise have done.