What to cook for dinner? Check out these Indian vegetarian dinner recipes and ideas and make your next meal effortless.
In this post, I will show you how to make a healthy dinner in less time and enjoy a home-cooked meal with your family!

Contents
What is the typical Indian dinner?
Indian dinner varies according to the State and region. Usually, North Indians will have any Indian flatbreads like chapati, bakri, and paratha, along with curry or dal. And typical South Indians will eat rice with curry, dal, or sambar.
Instead of rice, other grains like millet or quinoa will also make a healthy and wholesome side dish.
Tips to make easy dinner
- Plan the dinner before so you will only spend a little time deciding the menu.
- Use gadgets like an Instant pot, oven, and blender to make meals in less time.
- I usually meal prep the beans and legumes and store them in the refrigerator. And when you are out of time, these come in handy, and you can make dinner in less time. Please check my cooking 101 recipes to cook, store and use the beans, legumes, millet, and quinoa to make your dinner.
- Reuse the breakfast and lunch leftovers. It can be challenging to cook the exact amount of food at each meal. However, there will be leftovers, and I try to reuse them and prepare a new meal.
How to use leftovers for dinner
- If you have leftover oatmeal or steel-cut oats from breakfast, you can make this savory oatmeal.
- If you have cooked millet from lunch or breakfast, you can quickly make the millet yogurt rice, millet salad, or millet stir fry.
- If you have any leftover beans curries like chana masala or kidney beans curry, I make hummus using it and serve it with bread slices.
Vegetarian Dinner recipes
All of us at our home have the same dinner. So all these dinner recipes are suitable for toddlers, kids, and adults.
All these dinner recipes are
- Easy to make.
- Made from scratch.
- Delicious and healthy at the same time.
Curry recipes
These vegetarian curries and dals will be great side dishes for rice, chapati, naan bread, or other Indian flatbreads.
Saag Chana
Chana Masala
Vegetable chickpea curry
Black beans curry
Kidney beans curry (Rajma curry)
Indian potato spinach curry
Black eyed peas curry
Saag tofu
Bell pepper stir fry
Baked paneer curry
Indian dal
Red lentils curry
Lentil curry
One pot meals
Usually, we will get less time to make dinners, and these one-pot meals will be handy in these cases. All these one-pot recipes are a complete meal; you need not make any other side dishes to serve them.
Khichdi (Kitchari)
Chickpeas rice
Kidney beans pilaf
Lentils and rice pilaf
Millet Pongal
Mint pilaf
Tomato rice
Quinoa pilaf
Vegetable pulao recipe
Recipe
Indian vegetarian dinner recipes - Vegetable pulao
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 cups basmati rice
- 2 cups cooked peas You can use any beans or chickpeas
- 1.5 cups water
- 1.5 cups vegetables (mixed veggies, chopped into cubes)
- ½ cup onion (thinly sliced)
- 1 teaspoon ginger and garlic paste optional and you can use either one also
- ½ teaspoon red chili powder
- ½ teaspoon garam masala powder or curry powder
- ½ teaspoon cumin powder
- ½ teaspoon ground coriander
- 1.5 tablespoon oil
- 1.5 teaspoon Salt adjust according to your taste
Instructions
- Soak the basmati rice in water for 30 minutes or less. Then, chop the veggies and keep them aside.
- Start Instant pot in saute mode. Once it is hot, add oil to it.
- Now add sliced onions, ginger, and garlic paste.
- Let onions fry until they are golden brown.
- Now add chopped veggies. I like to add veggies according to the season. You can use veggies like potatoes, carrots, beets, beans, kohlrabi, turnip, peas, cauliflower stalk, and broccoli stalks. If you use beets, the color of the pilaf will be pink.
- Cook the veggies for a couple of minutes.
- Add spice powders - red chili powder, garam masala powder, ground cumin, coriander, and salt. Mix everything well.
- Add cooked beans or peas now and give a good mix of everything.
- Now add water and taste the salt. Water should taste a little salty, as veggies and rice will absorb it.
- Wash the rice gently 2 or 3 times to remove the starch completely. Drain the water from the rice thoroughly and add it to the Instant Pot.
- Mix it well and close the Instant Pot with the lid.
- Cancel saute mode. Seal the vent and select the manual or pressure cooker option. Pressure cook it for 5 minutes on HIGH pressure.
- Once the Instant pot beeps, turn it off and quickly release the pressure after 5 minutes.
- Take the inner pot out and let it rest for 10 minutes. Mix it well after 10 minutes; the vegetable pilaf is ready to serve! Garnish the pilaf with fresh cilantro leaves, and enjoy it hot!
Laurie Rasor
Have A Good day