Pudina raitha, Delicious raita with mint leaves

Lunch & dinner are two most important meals in a day. So we should always take proper care to do it on right time and enjoy those two meals. Is it not true? Salad & raitha, these are two side dishes what makes our meals more delicious & enjoyable. Raitha is nothing but a curd (yogurt) based side dish what is good for health and a magical food what can make a boring & simple food more enjoyable. I think most of you have already tried this awesome side dish, raitha. Did you do?

Raitha, yogurt & Summer

Raitha (or raita) is one of the most popular side dishes in India, okay more particularly in Northern Indian states where the temperature reaches 40 degrees during summer days. In some places, it even reaches more than 45 degrees too. So people make eating yogurt (or curd) a practice to beat summer. There are a lot of dishes where the curd is used and people eat curd a lot throughout the day. People drink a lot of chaas, lassi (curd based drink) during summer. They prepare raita (raita, again a curd based dish) and eat this as a side dish when they are having a meal. They use curd to make different vegetarian & non-vegetarian curry & gravy. Not only that, people even enjoy plain curd with rice or roti too. In south India, people love to have curd rice as a delicious meal.

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Raitha & Its types

There are different types of raitha (or raita) are available in North Indian cuisine. These are onion raita, cucumber raita, fruit raita, boondi raita, plain raita, mint raitha etc. These names have been adopted based on ingredients apart from curd. Different types of vegetables, fruits, spices are used to make different types of raitha. We all do enjoy this raitha at our home but it becomes more delicious when you enjoy this in a roadside dhaba under the sky. They use homemade curd which is more sour in taste & fresh, so the taste of such raitha is always different. Not only that when you enjoy this under the open sky at night, the time becomes more enjoyable. Is it not correct? What do you say? Did you ever experience such thing ever? You will never forget such experiences and you are served your favorite dishes along with delicious raitha then that will be your day, haha. I have tried such dinner in Sonepat, Haryana that too under the sky sitting on a khaat. There was a piece of plywood on that khaat where they kept our foods. I had another such dinner again under the open sky at the outskirt of Nashik, Maharashtra. But this time table was there but two khaats were there instead of chairs. So we had to sit on khaat. Some side pillows were there to give us more comfort. Foods were really yummy. We also ordered two types of raitha as a side dish.

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Best Raitha

Okay, now coming to raitha recipe. As all of you know that there are different types of raita, so you will need to follow different types of recipes to make delicious raitha at home. Pudina raita is one of my favorite and my mom also makes an awesome pudina raitha at home. So I will share that homemade raita recipe here. Though I have also tried such pudina raita at some restaurants but still not in Kolkata where I am residing now but I tried those in Delhi. It was at a roadside dhaba located reside connecting road from Narela city to Holambi Khurd village in Delhi. It was typical roadside dhaba where mostly transport people or factory workers use to have food but because of the excellent quality of food, you can see a long queue of cars near this dhaba during lunch time because many travellers & factory owner also enjoy their lunch at that restaurant (I mean dhaba) too. There I tried super delicious pudina raitha. It was awesome but they used to call it as hara raita. That was the best raita what I have tasted ever in my life.

Mint raitha (raita) recipe

There are so many types of raita, as I have mentioned above but mint raitha is one of my favorite side dish for having perfect lunch or dinner. It is really healthy and helps our body to beat the heat and survive in summer days. So do you also like raita during summer days? In my case, I like raita throughout the year. I mean during winter also I do prefer raita as a side dish and if it is green raita, I mean pudina & coriander raita then nothing is better than this. Is there any specific raita what you like more than any other types of raitha? You can share your thought here by leaving a comment below. So gather all the words that are coming into your mind and share here with other readers of FavCounter.