Thank you everyone! I can’t wait to get cooking! I so appreciate the poster who shared what’s in her fridge—that’s good info and helps me understand one piece of why cooking Indian food is time-intensive for me: I have the wrong stuff prepped and stocked!

Anonymous wrote:I’d guess a lot of people keep something in the freezer rather than make from scratch when they’re tired.

This. I often make a double batch and keep some in the freezer. Always use it up in a month or so. Don’t like to keep things in the freezer for too long.

Egg bhurji is easy - essentially scrambled eggs with onions, tomatoes, and spices.

Dal is also extremely easy in the Instant Pot

I usually have North Indian curry masala (onion based) cooked in bulk and frozen in small quantities in my freezer. It hardly takes me any time to put together a meal, even if I have unexpected guests. What doi have in my freezer right now? Homemade chicken seekh kebab that can be used for appetizers, in kathi rolls, or in a curry. I have roasted eggplants (buy in bulk from Asian grocery stores and roast on the outdoor grill) that can be converted to baigan bharta or baba ghanoush. I have frozen veg pakoras to add to curd based kadhi, frozen vadas fir dahivada or sambhar vada and I have lots of tamarind chutney and mint chutney.

In my fridge, I have paneer, home sprouted mung beans and chick peas, peeled garlic, peeled onion, washed and plucked cilantro leaves.

In a hurry, my go to quick snacks for my teens are kathi kebab roll, hariyali paneer, shrimp in tomato and ajwain curry, Dani vada and mung daal chaat.

If you have an air fryer I highly recommend getting the Shan or MDH Tandoori/chicken 65/fish 65 masalas and marinating and air frying fish or chicken. I wash the fish after cutting into small fillets (but leave skin on) with turmeric powder and salt 3 or 4 times. Drain water and then marinate for 15 min in any of the masalas along with lime (concentrate or fresh) and some oil. Most of these packages have salt in them so read carefully.

Air fry 10-12 min depending on type of fish at 380-390 degrees. If you don't care about fat, melt some butter and drizzle on the fish when placing in air fryer. Remove skin when serving. Spicy fish sandwich is one of the easiest things I make.

(Bonus tip - line with aluminum foil even if directions say not to - the fish still gets cooked and you have less mess to clean up).

Easy meals:

Chappathi/Roti (just buy these at Patel brothers where they sell it hot - regular is pack of 25 for $7.99 or methi $10.99 for 25) and some kind of dhal/rajma/palak panneer

Dosa/oothappam with sambhar/chutney - You can get the batter in the Indian stores and pour them in a skillet. Or make the batter at home - google/youtube how to make idli/dosa batter - ratio is typically 4 cups idli rice : 1 cup broken urad dhal. Needs to be fermented (when mixing the two batters add 3/4 tsp salt per cup of rice and make it like pancake pourable consistency)

Other fancy dishes you could try:

Kadai panneer
Mutter Panneer
Peas pulao
Tandoori fish
Chicken 65
Apollo Fish
Aappam with coconut milk
Vegetable Kurma and Idiappam (rice string hoppers - buy the Daily Delight brand frozen ones and steam it 10 min if you don't want to do from scratch)

I am a visual person and hate reading cookbooks so I follow you-tube videos.

I like these two channels for South Indian dishes. There are captions on the first one's videos too:

https://www.youtube.com/c/VenkateshBhatsIdhayamThottaSamayal

https://www.youtube.com/c/MadrasSamayal

For North Indian dishes, I like this channel. I don't understand Hindi that much but am able to follow her:

https://www.youtube.com/c/KabitasKitchen

Anonymous wrote:Madhur Jaffrey’s books.

This.