Serve this cool, refreshing salad with my Lamb Tagine and Moroccan Couscous on this site.  Make the salad early in the day and keep in the refrigerator to let the flavors blend and intensify.  Add more mint to taste, but do not substitute dried mint; the flavor is just not the same.

Cucumber Raita

cucumber

Greek yogurt

lemon juice

mint

white sugar

salt

Stir together the cucumber, yogurt, lemon juice, mint, sugar, and salt in a bowl.  Cover and refrigerate at least 3 hours, preferably overnight.


This is my recipe, and I want to explain to the last poster why I use Greek style yogurt.  The cucumbers will weep a tremendous amount of liquid, especially if you let this sit all day or overnight.  If you do not use a firmer yogurt to start, you will end up with a watery Raita.  Since you used regular yogurt and actually added water, perhaps you either used fewer cucumbers, did not let yours sit in the refrigerator to blend the flavors as long as I did, or perhaps you just like it watery.  While I agree that Raita should be saucy, I do not think it should be watery, hence the Greek yogurt.

Quick tip to make everything easier and a nice presentation as well: if you have a good vegetable peeler, once you have the outer peeled off, use the peeler to make wide, thin strips of the cucumber - then you don't have to seed or chop anything, just keep making strips till you hit the seeds. Also, it was good, but I thought there was too much yogurt. But maybe my cucumbers were just small. Sounds like a personal problem. :-)

Great Raita. I prepared it with one small addition and that was adding one teaspoon of cumin. It provided it with an exceptional taste and authenticity.

I prepared this as more of a condiment than a salad, because that's what I was after for my purpose. It's also awesome as a salad!
I used 1 regular, peeled cuke and shredded it with the corse side of a box grater. I put it in a fine sieve and sprinkled it with some kosher salt, stirred it well and sprinkled another pinch of salt on it. I let this drain @ 15-20 minutes while I assembled the other ingredients. This draws out much of the moisture and keeps the cuke from watering down the raita. Otherwise, I followed the recipie as printed, cutting all in half since I only used one cuke. This was a FANTASTIC topping for Yakuta's Indian Style Sheekh Kabab elsewhere on this site. In fact, the two go together so well, I'll not make the kababs without this raita!

After spending a lot of time in India you learn to loooove raita!  But this is definitely not Indian raita.  I should have known when I saw the mint, but I figured I'd try it anyway.  The only change I made was to dice the cucumber.  It didn't taste bad, it was just very minty and not what I was looking for.  I'll continue to keep my eyes peeled for a good mixed raita recipe (cucumber, tomato, onion).

Excellent recipe! I have been searching for a cucumber raita recipes for a while and this one is the best I've found. Thank you.

This was terrific. I made the recipe exactly as written. The first night I served it with Tandoori Chicken. The second night we made pitas stuffed with cucumber raita leftover tandoori chicken and couscous. A light refreshing summer dish!

I used regular yogurt instead and it worked well. It wasn't as firm as it would have been if I had used the Greek Yogurt (which I knew ahead of time). Goes VERY well with the Moroccan Couscous and Lamb Tagine recipes. I served it alongside the two recipes noted and it went perfectly. I will absolutely make this again.

I strained regular yogurt through a strainer over a bowl for about two hours before mixing. This makes the consistancy thicker like Greek yogurt which we can't get in my small town. Still I agree that it probably should have been thinner actually because restaurant raita is much more like a thin sauce. This raita was okay as a condiment for rice biryani and on top of naan but it was missing something. We couldn't figure it out. Maybe some cumin would help the flavor. I will definetly keep searching for more raita recipes.

cucumber raita

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total: 3 hours, 15 minutes

Servings: 3

Author : BenevolentEmpress

Ingredients

Instructions

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