This easy aloo gobi recipe for a cauliflower and potato curry makes a gently spiced aloo gobi just like your favourite Indian restaurant makes. Traditionally a Punjabi dish originating in Northern India and Pakistan, aloo gobi has become a much-loved dish all over the world, thanks to Indian and Pakistani migrant and the proliferation of Indian restaurants. This delicious vegetarian curry is fantastic with basmati rice and Indian flatbreads.
‘Aloo’ means ‘cauliflower’ and ‘gobi’ is ‘potato’ and this classic Indian aloo gobi recipe will make you an incredibly delicious cauliflower and potato curry just like your favourite Indian restaurant makes. And while the category of dish is often translated as a ‘curry’, aloo gobi is actually a ‘sabji’ or spiced or curried vegetable dish.
Aloo gobi can be served as a side dish, as one of an array of dishes served as part of a home-cooked family feast or a restaurant meal, but it can also be eaten alone with rice or Indian flatbreads such as roti and naan. I’ll happily make a plate of papadams to tuck into leftover aloo gobi, which is even better with leftover tomato and cucumber yogurt raita on the side.
My idea of an ultimate spread of Indian dishes and Indian-influenced dishes, includes a Punjabi chole or chickpea curry, tamarind eggplant, and Burmese dishes such as this Indian-style Burmese curry, coconut rice and a couple of salads – perhaps this Burmese green mango salad, cucumber salad or potato salad or this raw cabbage slaw, Shan tomato salad or Shan vermicelli salad – along with naan or paratha, papadams, pickles, and chutneys.
But before I tell you more about this Indian aloo gobi recipe for a cauliflower and potato curry, I have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is reader-supported. If you’ve enjoyed our recipes, please consider supporting Grantourismo and what we do here by buying us a coffee (we’ll use our coffee money to buy cooking ingredients for recipe testing) or making a donation to our epic, original Cambodian cookbook and culinary history on Patreon.
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We might earn a small commission from your purchases on sites, such as Amazon, and we have plenty of inspiration here in our round-ups of James Beard award-winning cookbooks, cookbooks by Australian chefs, classic cookbooks for serious cooks, cookbooks for culinary travellers, travel books to inspire wanderlust, gifts for Asian food lovers, picnic lovers and travellers who love photography. Now let’s tell you more about this easy aloo gobi recipe.
Aloo Gobi Recipe for a Cauliflower and Potato Curry Like Your Favourite Indian Restaurant Makes
Before I tell you more about this easy aloo gobi recipe for a delicious cauliflower and potato curry, I wanted to explain why we’ve been sharing recipes for Indian dishes and Korean food and Japanese comfort food increasingly in recent months.
As our long loyal readers who’ve been with us since the start of Grantourismo 12 years ago would know, in our pre-pandemic life, most recipes that we published here on Grantourismo were for dishes that we’d fallen in love with and learnt to cook on our world travels.
Indeed, the first recipe series we launched in 2010 when we launched Grantourismo with a global year-long grand tour of the world was called The Dish, and the recipes were for the quintessential dishes of places we’d learnt to make on our travels.
Along with those, we shared recipes for dishes of cuisines we were researching for stories and books, and dishes by chefs we’d interviewed on food assignments, whose cookbooks we’d been gifted and lugged home and began cooking from.
From time to time we’d also publish family recipes, dishes we were testing for cookbook projects that before the pandemic were in early stages of development, and old favourites we used to cook in our former lives.
That all changed with the pandemic. As we could no longer travel, we threw ourselves into our cookbook projects – our Cambodian cookbook and culinary history, and a book I’d been working on that was part memoir-history and part Russian-Ukrainian family recipe book – and began recipe-testing and sharing those recipes, as well as research-related recipes.
Homesick and nostalgic, we also began sharing more recipes from our former lives, from childhood favourites our families cooked, dishes that Terence and I used to cook at home in our kitchens in Australia and abroad, and dishes we’d eaten and enjoyed in restaurants.
While restaurants are mostly open now here in Siem Reap, our favourite Indian restaurant remains shuttered and the owners are focused on their new branch in Phnom Penh, where there’s obviously more of a market for Indian food.
We’ve had cravings for the Indian restaurant food we’ve long eaten and loved and while we have plenty of Indian influenced Burmese recipes on the site, I thought I’d start sharing some recipes for some of our favourite Indian dishes – dishes we began cooking when we began eating Indian food back in Australia in the 1980s.
And that explains why this classic aloo gobi recipe for a cauliflower and potato curry is just like the gently spiced aloo gobi our favourite Indian restaurant makes – and not necessarily like an Indian grandma. For grandma’s cooking, you can browse my compilation of Russian-Ukrainian family recipes and our Cambodian recipe collection. Just a few tips to making this North Indian aloo gobi recipe.
Tips to Making this Aloo Gobi Recipe for a Cauliflower and Potato Curry
I only have a handful of tips to making this North Indian aloo gobi recipe of Punjabi origin, because with only a couple of key ingredients – cauliflower and potato – and a fairly concise list of spices, it’s actually a very easy Indian dish to make. This makes it a good dish to start with if you’re new to Indian cooking.
Firstly, after chopping your potatoes and cauliflower, transfer each of the vegetables to its own bowl of hot water for 5 minutes or so while you slice and mince the onion, garlic and ginger. This softens the vegetables so that they’ll cook faster. Drain them and pat them dry just before you begin cooking.
Once you start cooking, you’ll need to work fairly fast, so I create my own spice blend by combing the ground spices – ground cumin, coriander, turmeric, garam masala, and red chilli powder (not the cumin seeds nor amchur) – in a small bowl.
The amount of spices in this aloo gobi recipe produces what I’d consider to be a gently-spiced aloo gobi. But then we’re used to very intense spice and heat from decades eating fiery Thai curries, so if in doubt use half, as you could always add more spice later on in the cooking process.
We’re lucky to have an abundance of freshly ground spices available, including plenty of spice blends used in Indian cooking, such as garam masala and amchur, which is ground dried mango. If you don’t have access to a good Indian supermarket or specialty shop, you should be able to easily source these online. They’re all available on Amazon.
I cook this aloo gobi recipe in a round flat-bottomed wok, simply because that’s what we’ve long cooked most dishes in, having lived in Cambodia and Southeast Asia for so long, however, you could use a heavy bottomed pot or skillet.
I’ve used finely diced fresh tomatoes, but while you can’t substitute any of the other fresh ingredients, you could use canned chopped tomatoes or tomato pulp or even a teaspoon of concentrated tomato paste.
Timing is everything, and while you want the cauliflower and potatoes to be tender and just starting to soften, you don’t want to create Indian-style cauliflower mashed potatoes, as delicious as that would be, so do keep your eye on the cauliflower and potatoes.
If you’re not familiar with amchur, it has a fruitiness to it, as you’d expect from dried ground mango, which is why I suggest amchur or lemon juice. Although I have to confess that I use both in the aloo gobi recipe I make for ourselves.
Dried fenugreek is a must as far as I’m concerned though I note that not all Indian recipes call for it, but if they do, then it’s added at the end.
Fresh coriander leaves, which we pluck from the herb boxes on our balcony are essential, but if coriander or cilantro tastes like soap to you, then I recommend slices of mild long green chillies for freshness of flavour as much as colour.
Serve with your favourite Indian flatbread and pickles and chutneys. This aloo gobi recipe makes enough for four people if you’re serving it as one of an array of dishes that typically comprise a shared Indian restaurant meal or family feast. But if you’re only making this and a curry and rice, then it will satisfy two.
Aloo Gobi Recipe for a Cauliflower and Potato Curry
Ingredients
- 500 g potato diced into 2cm cubes – preferably a good frying potato, such as russets
- 500 g cauliflower sliced into small florets
- 1 piece long green chilli sliced
- 4 tbsp cooking oil neutral
- 1 tsp cumin seeds
- 4 cloves garlic minced
- 2 cm knob of ginger peeled and minced
- 250 g onion diced finely
- 100 g tomato diced finely
- 2 tsp ground cumin
- 2 tsp ground coriander
- ½ tsp ground turmeric
- ½ tsp garam masala
- ½ tsp red chilli powder
- ½ tsp sea salt – optional or to taste
- ½ tsp amchur (dried ground mango) or 1 tsp fresh lemon juice
- 1 tsp dried fenugreek
- 1 tbsp coriander leaves fresh
Instructions
- After chopping the potatoes and cauliflower, transfer each vegetable to its own bowl of hot water for 5 minutes or so while you prep the onion, garlic and ginger, and, in a small bowl, combine the ground spices – ground cumin, coriander, turmeric, garam masala, and red chilli powder; not the cumin seeds nor amchur.
- Just before you’re ready to begin cooking, drain the vegetables in a colander, pat them dry with a paper kitchen towel, and set them aside.
- In a round flat-bottomed wok over medium-high, heat the oil until shimmering, add the cumin seeds and when they start to sizzle, add the minced garlic and ginger and stir-fry until fragrant, then add the diced onion, stir-fry for a few minutes until soft, aromatic and transparent, and finally add the finely diced tomato and stir-fry until soft.
- Add the mixed ground spices, stir to combine, fry the spices, and if needed (if too dry), deglaze the wok with 2-3 tablespoons of water, then add the potatoes, stir-fry for a few minutes, then add the cauliflower and sliced green chillies, combine, and continue to stir-fry for another 5 minutes.
- Reduce the heat to low, cover the wok, and cook the aloo gobi for around 20-25 minutes, keeping an eye on it, and stirring it every 5 minutes or so. Remove the lid, use a fork to check how tender the potatoes are; if they’re starting to soften, stir the aloo gobi, increase the heat to medium and leave the lid off to reduce any remaining liquid so you have a dry curry of soft vegetables.
- When ready, season with the optional salt to suit your palate if needed, sprinkle on the amchur or lemon juice and dried fenugreek, stir through the aloo gobi, transfer to a serving bowl, and garnish with fresh coriander leaves.
- Serve your aloo gobi as a side with an array of dishes if preparing an Indian feast or if eating alone, serve with rice or Indian flatbreads such as naan or roti, or with papadams as a snack.
Nutrition
Please do let us know if you make this easy aloo gobi recipe for a classic Indian cauliflower and potato curry in the comments below as we love to hear how our recipes turned out for you.
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