Tomato Pulao

My 111th Recipe, "Tomato Pulao (Pulav)", a easy, healthy Lunch box recipe. Do you remember my Green Peas Pulav recipe post ? I had mentioned that it was the second most made dish by my MIL for RK's lunch box. Where you able to guess which one was the most made ? Yes, it is this wonderful Tomato Pulao. It is extremely easy to make, needs only 1 pot, some basic ingredients and it is healthy too. What else would you need from a lunchbox recipe. There are basically 2 different variations of Tomato Rice recipe my MIL used to prepare. One is where the tomato sauce and rice is cooked separately and then mixed together. The other recipe is what you are seeing here, in which both the tomato sauce and rice is cooked together in a pressure cooker. While I love the first version, this pressure cooker version is RK's favorite. While I named it as Tomato Pulao, he used to call it as Cooker Thakkali Sadam. I usually make it atleast once every week, and especially on those days when I need to get lunch ready within a short time. A real timesaver lunch recipe 😉

Tomato Pulao

Tomato Pulao

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Prep Time 10 mins

Cook Time 10 mins

Total Time 20 mins

Servings 2

Ingredients

  

• Basmati rice - ¾ Cup
• Ginger - ½ inch
• Garlic - 4 Cloves
• Green chilli - 1 Medium slit
• Onion - 1 Medium Finely sliced
• Green peas - ¼ Cup Optional
• Tomato - 2 Medium Chopped
• Turmeric - ¼ tsp
• Red chilli powder - ¼ tsp
• Garam masala - ¼ tsp
• Salt - ½ tsp Adjust as needed
• Coriander leaves - 2 Tbsp Finely Chopped

To temper

• Ghee / Oil - 1 Tbsp
• Cloves - 4
• Cinnamon - ½ stick
• Bay leaf - 1
• Cashew - 4
• Fennel seeds - ½ tsp

Instructions

 

• First wash and soak the rice in water for atleast 10 minutes. Also, crush the garlic and ginger using a mortar and pestle.
  
   
• Heat a cooker pan with ghee, add the ingredients listed under "To temper" one by one in the given order. Once the cashews turn golden brown, add the crushed ginger, garlic and saute until the garlic turns golden brown.
  
   
• Now add the slit green chilli, onion and saute until the onion turns translucent. Now add the green peas and saute for 30 secs.
  
   
  
  
• Add the tomatoes, salt and saute until it turns mushy. Then add the powders (Turmeric, Red chilli, Garam masala) and mix well until combined.
  
   
• Now add the soaked rice (drain the water), ¾ cup of water and give a stir. Sprinkle half of the finely chopped coriander and cook in medium flame for 1 whistle. Turn off the stove.
  
   
  
   
• Wait until the pressure subsides, open the lid of the cooker and add the remaining coriander leaves, few drops of ghee and mix carefully without breaking the rice strands.
  
   
• Serve and enjoy hot with raitha, kurma or just chips/appalam.
  

Notes | FAQ

- You can replace crushed ginger garlic with ginger garlic paste. But take care not to burn the bottom. Chances are higher as we are not using veggies here.
- Adjust salt and spiciness as per your taste.
- As usual, the ratio of rice and water should be 1:1.
- Do adjust the timing for cooking rice according to your pressure cooker and stove settings. Mine got done in about 5 minutes with 1 whistle.
- If you are making it for your kid's lunch box, you can go light on the tempering spices.