Vegetable Pulao (Indian Style Vegetable Rice)

This is one of the popular vegetarian recipes from India – Vegetable Pulao, which simply is, basmathi rice cooked with vegetables. The result is an absolutely delicious fare! It was the weekend and since I had cooked some chicken, I thought it would be great to cook some vegetarian rice to have with the chicken. So I started with the preparation hoping that it would turn out to be a great lunch! And thankfully…it turned out to be awesome :)

So lets start with the ingredients

1 cup basmati rice, cleaned and soaked in water for half an hour
1 medium sized onion finely chopped
Half cup diced carrots
Half cup chopped beans
Half cup fresh peas (this is purely optional)
1 tsp ginger-garlic paste
2-3 green chilies slit in half
1 tbsp ghee (if you do not have ghee, you can use unsalted cooking butter)
2 tbsp oil
5 cloves
3-4 whole cardamoms
1” cinnamon
2 bay leaves
10- 12 cashew nuts
Salt to taste

Once you’ve got all the ingredients in place..it’s time to start cooking !!! So lets start…

In a pan, add the ghee and oil. Once hot, add the spices – bay leaves, cardamoms, cloves, cinnamon. Also add the cashew nuts. Fry them for a few minutes. You would soon start getting the aroma from the spices. Uhhhhh…smells good already!! Then add the onions and the chilies.

Continue to fry the onions till it turns golden brown. Then add the ginger garlic paste and stir fry for a couple of minutes. Now add the veggies – carrots and beans. We can add the peas a little later, since peas cook faster than carrots and beans. Cook the vegetables for a few minutes. Add peas and stir for a couple more minutes. Add salt and give the mix a good stir.

Now add the basmathi rice that has been soaked in water. Continue to fry the rice for a few minutes. Now add 2 cups water. Usually, the water to rice ratio is 2:1, ie, two cups water for one cup rice. However, sometimes, it could be more or less.

Once you have added the water, mix the rice mixture so that all the ingredients are mixed well. Make sure you don’t break the rice in the process. Basmathi rice is usually long grained, so we would not want to break the grains. Take the spoon against the edge of the pan and around, so that we don’t break the rice grains. Cover the pan and continue cooking till the rice is done. However, do not forget to peek occasionally into the pan as it cooks to make sure that the water is sufficient and the rice grains do not stick to the bottom of the pan and gets over fried/cooked. So gently stir the mixture occasionally. If more water is required, gently sprinkle additional water and continue cooking. Also ensure that you do not add too much water, that the rice turns to porridge :). The water should just be sufficient to cook the rice.

Once the rice is cooked, turn off the heat and remove from the stove. Keep it covered for a couple of minutes.

Vegetable Pulao is now ready..yaayyy! Serve hot with vegetable/meat curry and you have a wonderful tasty lunch. You can also make some onion raitha (salad made from onions and yogurt), which goes very well with the pulao. It’s simple and easy to make and I will post the recipe in a separate blog post.

My lunch that weekend was great…veg pulao with onion raitha and chicken fry….yummmm!!! Hope you enjoy making the dish and eating it too…. :) …Adios!!!