Raita: The Yogurt Salad That Goes with Biryani

Salut! It's Yoko, a food blogger and member of the Japan Biryani Association.

Today I'm sharing a recipe for raita, the yogurt salad that goes so well with biryani, the Indian dish I'm obsessed with right now.

Biryani is fragrant and spicy.

It's delicious on its own,

but taking a break with some raita now and then makes it even better.

What Is Raita?

Raita is a dish eaten in India, Pakistan and elsewhere.

Roughly speaking, it's a salad of chopped vegetables like cucumber and onion mixed with yogurt,

sometimes with spices like cumin and cayenne pepper, or herbs like mint and cilantro.

In India it's eaten with biryani and curry, and the version with cucumber is the most common.

How to Make Raita

This time I'm making the most basic cucumber raita.

Ginger, cinnamon and garlic, used in biryani, are "warming" ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine.

Cucumber, on the other hand, is a "cooling" ingredient,

so it's perfect for cooling down a body heated up by biryani.

Cucumber Raita

1. Cut the cucumber into rough 7mm cubes.
2. Mix the yogurt, milk and salt well until smooth.



3. Add the cucumber, mix well, and you're done!

It looks cute decorated with paprika powder or the like.

This is a very simple recipe,

but it's perfectly fine without the milk,

and you can also add grated cucumber, or use seeded tomatoes.

Raita Is Good for Dieting

Is anyone out there on a diet?

Are you thinking, "Biryani alone will probably make me gain weight, so I don't need to make raita too..."?

That's completely wrong!

In fact, cucumber is a great food for dieting.

Cucumber contains the fat-breaking enzyme phospholipase, which promotes fat metabolism.

If you're making raita for the diet effect,

I recommend the version with grated cucumber.

Grating breaks down the cucumber's cell membranes, so you can take in phospholipase efficiently.

Hiromitsu Nozaki, executive chef of the famous Japanese restaurant Wakuden Bun-Toku-Yama and author of "The Just-Eat-Cucumbers Diet,"

ate up to 10 cucumbers a day, in place of breakfast and as snacks,

and apparently lost 11kg in two months. Amazing.

So that was a raita recipe that goes well with biryani.

When you make curry or biryani you usually have yogurt on hand,

and cucumbers are almost always in the fridge, so you can whip it up quickly.

Please give it a try.

See you next time. Au revoir!