Indian culture has a rich culinary diversity and Indian food is known for exotic spices and delicate herbs. Due to its distinctive features, the country has given birth to a large number of cuisines. In India, parathas are served at the time of breakfast. These Indian parathas are a category of Indian breads and stuffed with different vegetables.
In this post, I have described healthy, delicious, and most popular parathas cooked in almost every Indian home, particularly in Northern India. These healthy mouth-watering parathas will surely make you tempted and tickle your taste buds. Here is a list:
1. Aaloo- Pyaz (Potato-Onion) Paratha
It is one of the most popular parathas that is cooked with a lot of pure ghee and served with dollops of white butter that is commonly called as “Makhan” prepared at home. For cooking potato parathas, follow these steps:
• Firstly, boil the potatoes and peel them. Take some onion and cut them finely.
• Add spices like garam masala, green chilies, salt, and red chili as per your taste.
• Mash the potatoes and onion completely with that spice mixture.
• For stuffing, you can choose two methods first is:
• From well kneaded dough of wheat flour, take two medium sized balls and roll into circle on the board.
• Take small portion of potatoes and onion mixture for stuffing and spread it on one of the rolled dough.
• Cover this dough with the other and press the edges to lock the potatoes inside them.
• Apply some dry flour to prevent the paratha from sticking on hot griddle.
• The second method is:
• Take a little bit large ball of dough and roll it out in circle. Put the aaloo-pyaz filling in the center of this rolled dough.
• Now bring the edges together to make it swag.
• Lock the mixture by applying pressure with your fingers.
• Now dust the rolling board with some dry flour and roll the swag.
• In both the methods, way of cooking the paratha on the hot griddle or tava is same.
• Fry the aaloo-pyaz paratha with ghee from both the sides.
• Serve the paratha with ghee, butter, mango pickle, and yogurt.
2. Gobhi (Cauliflower) Paratha
• Grate the cauliflower/gobhi finely and add some finely chopped green chilies to this mixture.
• Squeeze the gobi completely to make it dry thoroughly.
• Add red chili, salt, and few carom seeds to this mixture.
• Take medium sized dough of kneaded wheat flour and stuffing as well as frying procedure is same as that of aloo – pyaz paratha.
• It is also served with yogurt, butter, mango pickle, and sometimes coriander/mint chutney.
3. Paneer (Cottage Cheese) Paratha
It is one of my favorite choices among the parathas. The procedure of cooking paneer paratha is as follows:
• Grate or crumble the paneer finely with your hands.
• Add chopped green chilies, salt, and spices’ powder to it and mix thoroughly.
• Take medium dough of kneaded wheat flour and rolled it out.
• Fill grated paneer into it and pour some dry flour to roll it out easily.
• Fry it with ghee on the hot griddle or tava.
• Served with yogurt, butter, mango/chili pickle, and coriander/mint chutney.
4. Palak (Spinach) Paratha
Palak paratha is another variation of parathas that is healthy and delicious. It is good for children who refuse to eat palak in the vegetables. In addition, it is most popular Indian veg. food served at the time of breakfast.
• Rinse the spinach leaves in water to remove the dirt.
• Drain them.
• Most of the people boil the spinach leaves, blend the boiled leaves, and then knead the wheat flour with it. But, I usually love to stuff raw leaves directly into the dough as done in aaloo-pyaz, gobhi, and paneer paratha.
• If you want to cook by following first procedure then putting the boiled mixture of spinach into wheat flour, add salt, carom seeds, green chili, red chili, one tablespoon ghee, and knead the floor.
• Take small dough, roll it out and fry it on the tava with ghee. Serve this hot spinach paratha with butter or yogurt.
• On the other hand, if you want to eat paratha in my way. Chop the spinach leaves finely, wash, and then rinse them thoroughly without leaving any trace of water. Now, add the same spices mentioned above.
• Now follow the same procedure as that of paneer or gobhi paratha.
5. Mooli (Radish) Paratha
It is one of my mom’s favorite parathas. It is mostly cooked in winters as radish is easily available in winters.
• Take one mooli without leaves, peel off its layer and grate it.
• Remember, that radish when grate contains a lot of water, remove that first by squeezing in any dry cloth to make paratha easily.
• Add carom seeds, garam masala, one finely chopped green chili, red chili, salt as per your taste.
• The procedure of stuffing and frying it on the tava is same as that of aforementioned.
• Serve it with coriander/mint/red chili – garlic chutney or mango pickle.
One tip for keeping the parathas softer even after sometime, add a spoon of ghee in the wheat flour at the time of kneading. Adding few carom seeds in the stuffing will also keep stomachache and acidity problems away. Apart from aforementioned, parathas of methi, chana dal methi, sugar, are also very common. Most of the vegetarian Indian food place including restaurants, different food courts also offers all of these paranthas. So, try them all and delight your taste buds!