90 Min

GF

Purple Potato Chaat Salad

Chaat — a family of roadside salty, sweet, tangy and crunchy snacks in India — come in many sizes, shapes and flavors. After leaving India, this is the food I missed most and, over time, taught myself how to make versions of it.

These days, I can pretty much turn anything into a chaat if I just have the right sauces, which usually comprise of a creamy yogurt sauce flecked with cumin, a bright herby cilantro chutney or just a handful of herbs and something sweet — perhaps diced mango or peaches, or just a dash of sugar. The crunch can come via crushed nuts, tortilla or potato chips. Top it off with a sprinkle of black salt and roasted crushed cumin seeds and there you have a chaat.

Share this recipe

Cook Time

90 Minutes

Serves

4

Directions

Step 1

In a small stockpot over high heat, fill water 2 to 3 inches above the potatoes, bring to a boil and let them simmer, covered, for 10 to 12 minutes. Turn the heat off and let them rest in the water for about an hour. Drain and refrigerate. The potatoes should be cold before you make the salad.

Step 2

To make the salad, slice the potatoes and toss them in a serving bowl with 1/2 teaspoon salt, sliced onions, serrano, ginger, cilantro, mint, and lime juice.

Step 3

In a separate bowl, whisk the yogurt and season it with 1 teaspoon of sea salt and sugar. In a small frying pan over high heat, warm the olive oil and pop the cumin seeds. Immediately, take the pan off the heat and stir them into the yogurt. Pour the yogurt over the potatoes and garnish with toasted peanuts and a few mint or cilantro leaves. You can make this a few hours ahead of time and keep it fresh in the refrigerator.

Notes & Variations

There are many ways to vary this salad — add 1/2 of a diced mango or peaches; instead of peanuts, add a nut or seed of your choice.
If using Greek-style yogurt, use only 1 cup and smooth it out with 1 cup of water. The yogurt mix should be thick and creamy, not watery, so adjust accordingly.
Replace half the salt with black salt, if you can get your hands on some. It will have a sulfurous noxious odor at first, but it will fade, and the flavor will more than make up for it.

Ingredients

1 1/2 pounds purple potatoes

1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced

1 serrano pepper, minced

1 tablespoon minced unpeeled ginger

1/2 cup chopped cilantro

2 to 3 tablespoons minced mint leaves

Juice of 1 lime

1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt, divided

2 cups plain whole-milk yogurt (see notes)

1 tablespoon sugar

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

2 tablespoons toasted peanuts

Step 1

Step 2

To make the salad, slice the potatoes and toss them in a serving bowl with 1/2 teaspoon salt, sliced onions, serrano, ginger, cilantro, mint, and lime juice.

Step 3

1 1/2 pounds purple potatoes

1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced

1 serrano pepper, minced

1 tablespoon minced unpeeled ginger

1/2 cup chopped cilantro

2 to 3 tablespoons minced mint leaves

Juice of 1 lime

1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt, divided

2 cups plain whole-milk yogurt (see notes)

1 tablespoon sugar

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

2 tablespoons toasted peanuts

Notes & Variations

There are many ways to vary this salad — add 1/2 of a diced mango or peaches; instead of peanuts, add a nut or seed of your choice.
If using Greek-style yogurt, use only 1 cup and smooth it out with 1 cup of water. The yogurt mix should be thick and creamy, not watery, so adjust accordingly.
Replace half the salt with black salt, if you can get your hands on some. It will have a sulfurous noxious odor at first, but it will fade, and the flavor will more than make up for it.

Tags:

90 Min

Tags:

90 Min

Colorful food makes life worth living.

If you want some more purple potatoes in your life, check out the recipes below!

THE COLOR OF ROYALTY

Purple Mashed Potatoes

Roasted Potatoes with Cranberry Chutney

20 Min

GF

NF

Cherry Mushroom Chaat

Chaats are beloved savory snacks that originated in India and are usually available at roadside stalls or food carts. At the core, they are salty, sweet, spicy, crunchy snacks usually involving vegetables, lentils and herbs with drizzles of chutneys and yogurt. It’s the food from India most of us transplants miss the most. Over the years, I have tried dozens of variations from corn mint chaat to the quintessential pani poori and loved them all. Here is a salad loosely based on the idea of a chaat. The yogurt provides the creamy touch, mushroom the meaty, cherry the sweet and tarragon the herbaceous finish.

30 min

GF

Chicken Chaat Salad

Back in 2001, we opened Indika with this salad, and it was an instant success. To satisfy my chaat cravings, I ate it for lunch for three weeks straight. The sweet, spicy, tangy flavors paired with greens made it a satisfying, substantial salad. We served it at Pondicheri in New York City; our landlord would come in for it regularly and declared it the best chicken salad in the city.

45 Min

GF

NF

Corn Mint Chaat

As we said our final goodbye to Indika, the restaurant I opened in 2001, this past week, I was reminiscing about Corn Mint Chaat, a popular summer salad. Renditions of street food from India, with magical combinations of fresh vegetables and aromatic herb-infused sweet, spicy and savory chutneys with crunchy tidbits in almost any form — and sometimes turned on its head into a salad — bring on tastes that make most of us transplants from India swoon. One of the unusual flavors common to chaat is black salt, a sulfurous salt native to India. It smells funky (imagine boiled egg aroma), appears pink but turns blackish when it hits food or water and is absolutely delicious on chaats. Over the years, I have experimented with dozens of chaat combinations — from using potato or tortilla chips for crunch to grilled kale and basil leaves for herbs — but making one is no easy task. However, here is a take on the corn mint chaat that may be relatively easy to execute at home.

45 Min

GF

Cream Chaat

This dessert is inspired by a street sweet of India called ‘Daulat ki chaat’ (daulat means rich). It is rich but incredibly light and essentially just a whipped cream but the incremental addition of sugar and saffron makes all the difference.

15 Min

GF

V

Cucumber Bhel Poori

Bhel poori is a common Indian street food native to Mumbai and cities in Gujarat. Usually made with puffed rice (a very common snack in India) and varying mixes of seasonal vegetables, herbs, chutneys and crunch bits of chickpea flour or wheat flour. This is an instant ‘salad’ so put it together just before eating. The ‘bhel’ refers to puffed rice and ‘poori’ refers to bits of pooris (fried wheat puffs) crushed just before mixing. Here we are replacing the poori with sev, a crispy chickpea noodle found in most Indian grocery stores.

15 Min

DF

GF

V

Fruit Chaat

In New Delhi, for almost a decade, there resides a sweet fruit chaat vendor tucked away near the famous Janpath street market. Depending on the time of year, his choice of fruits and vegetables varies. He rides his bike every morning with a fresh load of fruits and vegetables, hands out fruit chaat all day until his stock is over. Mango, melons, cucumber, papaya, pineapple, apples, or bananas are cubed and laid out on a banana leaf plate and sprinkled with chaat masala. Sometimes, strawberries will show up in the mix. A squeeze of lime and he hands it to you with a smile. If it can be eaten raw, any vegetable or fruit is fair game for fruit chaat. Usually, chaat masala is a combination of toasted ground cumin, chile powder, amchur (dried mango), salt and more. Black salt, a sulfurous rock salt native to India, is a common but not essential component of chaat masala. It’s an explosion of flavors – give it a try this summer with the fruits and vegetables at hand!

120 Min

GF

Garbanzo Chaat Salad

The garbanzo beans are seasoned to a spicy richness with cumin, black pepper, ginger and asafetida and then added to the salad.

45 Min

GF

V

Patra

This is is one of the most iconic and utterly delicious snack foods from the state of Gujarat.

20 Min

GF

Papaya Chaat

I love the flavor of papaya and often add it to chopped salads or Indian street snacks, called chaats.

Drinks

Drinks

Hot Drinks

Cold Drinks

Cocktails

Condiments

Condiments

Raita

Chutneys

Pickles

Masala

Grains

Grains

Buckwheat

Khichri

Millet

Noodles

Quinoa

Rice

Whole Grains

Dough

Dough

Roti

Paratha

Naan

Bread

Crackers

Pizza

Batter

Batter

Dosas

Pancakes

Crepes

Savory Baked

Savory Baked

Biscuits

Bread Pudding

Soups

Soups

Light Soup

Creamy Soup

Dal Soup

Stews

Cold Soup

Snacks

Snacks

Chaat

Spreads

Fried Snacks

Nosh

Legumes

Legumes

Dal

Beans

Salads

Salads

Veg Salads

Non-Veg Salads

Land & Sea

Land & Sea

Eggs

Birds

Meat

Fish

Shellfish

Paneer

Paneer

Paneer

Vegetables

Vegetables

Sabzi

Potatoes

Mushrooms

Eggplants

Cauliflower

Squashes

Root Vegetables

Vegetable Curries

Green Vegetables

Okra