Traditional Indian Cucumber Raita

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Jun 26

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**Cucumber Raita** is a popular Indian side dish, which is made with yogurt and cucumber and Indian herbs and spices. Usually cucumber raita is served alongside curries, cooling off your mouth in between bites - raita acts like the ultimate delicious and easy palette cleanser!

This easy Traditional Cucumber Raita recipe is straightforward and probably intuitive to make for anyone closely familiar with Indian cooking. It’s nice to have it written down for quality control and also for all of you that are new to raita or Indian cooking. Welcome!

My free motivational guide, Make Cooking Fun!!, gives more details on how using ingredients you have on hand can inspire you to get creative with your recipes! You’ll see later on in this post how versatile this Traditional Cucumber Raita is when you serve it with pretty much any North Indian dish. I’ve really enjoyed this raita as a side for almost all of my life! The cool and tangy raita serves well to cleanse your palette with any Indian curry, I also enjoy using it as a spread for wraps and rolls. The magic in this raita all comes from the cucumbers, which are cool and refreshing. Plus, the spices bring an earthy tanginess to the cool raita to allow you to keep enjoying hot Indian food with mini raita breaks in the middle. To create a wonderful complete Indian feast, be sure to serve your Cucumber Raita as a condiment with your favourite Indian dishes as part of your Live to Cook one-month challenge! Get started for free by signing up to my email newsletter, plus you’ll have all of my new recipes delivered straight to your inbox, so that dinner is never a dilemma!

You’ll also see exactly how to make sure you have the best cucumber raita at home by watching the video at the bottom of this post! If you haven’t already, I’d love it if you would please subscribe to my YouTube channel and don’t forget to hit the bell button to be notified when all of my new video recipes go live! Let’s get mixing!

What is a Raita?

In Indian cooking, a raita (pronounced “rye-tah”) is a dip that is served on the side as a palette cleanser. It is always made with yogurt, and you can add either raw or cooked vegetables, herbs, or other garnishes along with spices. This is more of a homestyle concept as you won’t find raita at restaurants. There are a variety of raita recipes, such as a tomato and onion raita, boondi raita (small balls of chickpea flour), lauki raita (bottle gourd), green chili raita, pudina (mint) and cilantro raita, just to name a few!

What’s the Difference Between Greek Tzatziki and Cucumber Raita?

I recently just shared my Greek Tzatziki Sauce recipe and while making both dips, I did notice that they are very similar. However, in Tzatziki Sauce, you are using Greek yogurt instead of plain regular yogurt, which creates a thicker sauce. Additionally, we are not adding garlic or oil to Cucumber Raita, rather, we are just letting the magic of the spices and cucumber work here. On the other hand, for both recipes, you really need to make sure that the cucumber water is excreted as much as possible to ensure that the texture and taste is not spoiled!

Is Cucumber Raita Healthy?

Definitely! First of all, yogurt is an excellent source of calcium that will promote strong bones and teeth. The bacteria culture in yogurt also supports a healthy digestive system. The ground cumin is also known to support digestive health. Cucumber is an excellent source of water to hydrate your body, which results in flushing out toxins and assisting in kidney health. Cucumber is also high in Vitamins A, B, and C, which contain antioxidants that help with skin care.

TOOLS NEEDED TO MAKE Cucumber Raita

Ingredients for Cucumber raita

I love this easy Indian Cucumber Raita recipe because you only need a handful of ingredients! You can get the full list of ingredients and their amounts along with the ability to save the recipe for later when you scroll to the bottom of this post for the FULL PRINTABLE recipe card. This will also allow you to scale the recipe based on how many portions you want to make - whether for only a few mouths or enough to serve a large party, everything is automatically adjusted for you!

Yogurt: Make sure that it’s plain yogurt and with a higher fat content. Higher fat yogurts have less water and will be creamier, which is ideal for your cucumber raita.
English cucumber: English cucumbers are my favourite to use in all of my recipes because they are sweeter and you don’t have to worry about removing the seeds or peeling the skin. This will apply if you are also using Persian cucumbers, however, my preference is the English cucumber.
Ground cumin: Ground cumin is one of my favourite spices in a variety of cuisines! It’s such a wonderful spice for our Cucumber Raita because it adds a nice earthiness to the dip.
Chaat masala: This is a very complex spice blend of black salt, amchur powder (dried mango powder), cumin, coriander, dried ginger, asafoetida (hing), and chili powder. It’s quite difficult to describe how it seasons food, but it adds tartness, fruitness, and a bit of spice the complement the yogurt.
Black salt: In Hindi, we say that black salt makes food “chatpata.” There’s no direct translation to this, but my best way to describe what chatpata means in English is adding a combination of sourness and tanginess.
red chilli powder: Just add a small amount for garnish.
salt: Always add this to taste! Some salt is necessary to bring out all the other flavours.

How to Make Cucumber Raita

Shred the cucumber thinly using a box grater. The cucumber will release lots of water, which will dilute the raita if not drained. Squeeze as much water as you can from the shredded cucumber.

Add the cucumber to the bowl with yogurt. Adjust the consistency by adding more or less yogurt to your preference. I find 1 3/4 Cups of plain yogurt for 1 large English cucumber is the perfect for a balanced creamy and crispy texture in the raita.

Then, add the spices and salt to taste and stir well to combine. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Let the raita chill for at least 30 minutes before serving. Chilled raita is definitely delicious, but letting it sit helps the flavours to mellow out and make the raita more flavourful.

Tips for The Tastiest Cucumber Raita

Be sure to grate the cucumber finely and evenly.
Use yogurt that is not too watery. It needs to be a nice and creamy yogurt so that the final raita has a nice and smooth creamy texture.
It’s crucial to squeeze out all the water from the cucumber. The cucumber water will dilute the flavour of the raita. Squeezing the grated cucumber with your hands and then straining any excess moisture will ensure you’ve really removed everything!
Make sure you taste often to adjust the amount of chaat masala and cumin to complement the black salt.
If you want to make this Traditional Cucumber Raita spicy, you can add very finely chopped green chilies.

How to Serve Cucumber Raita

As mentioned, Cucumber Raita is typically a palette cleanser, which means you’ve got so many options with how to serve it! Here are just a handful of ideas to help you craft the perfect meal:

How to Store Cucumber Raita

You could either keep your cucumber raita in a bowl or ramekin and cover it with plastic wrap. Additionally, you can also transfer the contents into an airtight container. Cucumber raita will last about a week in the fridge, as the cucumber may make your raita soggy over time.

Other Indian Dip Recipes

Watch How to Make Traditional Indian Cucumber Raita Here:

Let me know what you think of this recipe in the comments! If you’ve tried this recipe, be sure to post it on social media and tag it with #cookingwithanadi and mention me @cookingwithanadi. Thank you!

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Indian, sauces, sides, dips, vegetarian

Indian, North Indian

Yield: 2 1/2 Cups

Author: Anadi

Refreshing Indian Cucumber Raita Recipehttps://youtu.be/go3gTuj60zsIndian cucumber raita is an easy and healthy yogurt dip! It is made with grated cucumber and tangy and earthy Indian spices. Indian cucumber raita is served as a palette cleanser with your favourite Indian curries and breads!2023-06-26

Easy Traditional Cucumber Raita

Cucumber Raita is a popular Indian side dish, which is made with yogurt and cucumber and Indian herbs and spices. Usually cucumber raita is served alongside curries, cooling off your mouth in between bites - raita acts like the ultimate delicious and easy palette cleanser!

Prep time: 10 MinTotal time: 10 Min

Ingredients

1 large English cucumber
1 3/4 Cups plain yogurt
1/4 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp chaat masala
pinch of black salt
pinch of red chilli powder (garnish)
salt to taste

Instructions

Shred the cucumber thinly using a box grater. The cucumber will release lots of water, which will dilute the raita if not drained. Squeeze as much water as you can from the shredded cucumber and transfer the cucumber to a large mixing bowl.
Add the cucumber to the bowl with yogurt. Adjust the consistency by adding more or less yogurt to your preference. I find 1 3/4 Cups of plain yogurt for 1 large English cucumber is the perfect for a balanced creamy and crispy texture in the raita.
Then, add the spices and salt to taste and stir well to combine. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Notes

Let the raita chill for at least 30 minutes before serving. Chilled raita is delicious, but letting it sit helps the flavours to mellow out and make the raita more flavourful.