Tandoori vegetables

Tandoori vegetables

Deliciously spiced tandoori vegetables and potatoes, with garlic, ginger and warming spices. Healthy, simple and packed full of flavour.

Tandoori cooking is an iconic Indian style of cooking that originated in the Punjab, in the North of India.

As a Punjabi family, tandoori style chicken was an absolute staple growing up. Especially when hosting guests or when cooking a Summer barbecue, you know the food was always full of delicious Indian flavours. 

These days I am pretty much vegetarian, but I still love that tandoori taste. So I decided to take my family’s recipe for tandoori paste and try out tandoori vegetables, which went down a treat with my carnivorous family!

This tandoori paste (marinade) works with just about everything. In this dish I have used peppers, red onions, cherry tomatoes and potatoes (a dish in itself known as tandoori aloo). You could also try broccoli, sweet potato and cauliflower.

These tandoori vegetables pair beautifully with my mint cilantro chutney (coriander chutney).

What does tandoori mean?

Tandoori chicken was first created in the 1920s, when a whole chicken would be marinated in spices and yogurt, and cooked in a wood burning clay oven called the ‘tandoor’.

A tandoori marinade, is deliciously spiced and warming thanks to the garlic, ginger and myriad of spices. The traditional cooking process would also give it its iconic smoky flavour, which is difficult to replicate in a normal household oven. However this recipe gets you pretty close to that deliciously authentic tandoori flavour.

What is in tandoori marinade?

Tandoori style food is incredibly healthy because of the abundance of spices in the marinade, and the fact that the dish is baked in the oven, which of course means the cooking style is naturally low in saturated fat. It is a great way to enjoy Indian food when you want to eat healthily.

Once you have made the marinade, it works well for chicken, paneer and a variety of vegetables.

The tandoori marinade is made up of these ingredients:

• Olive oil
• Lemon
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Green chilli
• Salt
• Masala
• Chilli powder or smoked paprika
• Cumin powder
• Greek yogurt

Tips for delicious tandoori vegetables

Marinate the vegetables for at least one hour, or overnight ideally. This will ensure that the flavours come through from the marinate and infuse into the vegetables.

Use Greek yogurt rather than natural yogurt. Greek yogurt is thicker than natural yogurt, and so it will create a thick tandoori paste that coats the vegetables really well. 

Cook these tandoori vegetables in a hot oven or on the barbecue.

Tandoori vegetables

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• Author: noasmodernkitchen
• Total Time: 50 minutes
• Yield: Serves 4 as a side 1x
• Diet: Vegetarian

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Ingredients

Scale 1x2x3x

Marinade

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 lemon – juice only
• 3 garlic gloves – crushed
• 1 inch piece of ginger – grated
• 1 chilli – finely sliced. Remove the seeds for a milder dish
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons masala
• 1 teaspoon cumin powder
• 2 teaspoons chilli powder

Vegetables

• 1 red pepper – chopped into chunky squares
• 1 green pepper – chopped into chunky squares
• 2 large potatoes – chopped into cubes
• 2 red onions – roughly chopped
• 400g cherry vine tomatoes

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Instructions

Marinade

1. Place all of the ingredients for the marinade into a large bowl. Mix everything together until all of the spices are well combined with the yogurt.
2. Transfer half of the marinade into a separate bowl.
3. Add the vegetables into one bowl with the marinade, and add the potatoes into the other bowl with the marinade.
4. Stir the contents of each bowl together until the vegetables and potatoes are well coated.
5. Leave the vegetables and potatoes to marinate for at least an hour, but ideally overnight.

Option 1 – Roasting in the oven

1. Before roasting, preheat the oven at 200c.
2. Roast the vegetables and potatoes in the oven for around 40 minutes, until soft on the inside and crispy on the outside.

Option 2 – Cooking on the barbecue

1. Skewer the vegetables and potatoes, and cook on the barbecue until the vegetables and potatoes are fully cooked through.

• Prep Time: 10 minutes
• Cook Time: 40 minutes

Nutrition

• Serving Size: 1/4 of the dish
• Calories: 215