Desi Saag

As a desi living away from the delicious cooking of my family, I’ve cultivated a decent spice cabinet. However, quarantine means I’m not able to replenish my pantry with trips to the Indian grocery as often as normal. That said, I’m not willing to give up favorites like dal or curry chicken. Here, I make a delicious dish that is not intimidating when it comes to ingredients. I had a craving for saag (spinach) and threw something together with frozen spinach, which is less than ideal but will work in a pinch and seems a likely option for a lot of us right now who may be avoiding fresh spinach because it takes up lots of room in the fridge and spoils fairly quickly.

The spice and acidity of this dish make it a delightful side and great way to liven up frozen veggies! For bonus points, you can mix this saag with dal for a more filling meal.

Ingredients

• Spinach (fresh or frozen)
• Lemon
• Onion
• Ginger
• Garlic
• Yogurt (2% fat or higher to prevent curdling)
• Jalapeno
• Cayenne/Kashmiri mirch
• Cumin seeds
• Ground coriander seed
• Turmeric
• Garam masala (homemade or store-bought)
• Salt
• Ghee

Before you start cooking, it helps to do a little prepping. Dice an onion, chop a few cloves of garlic, and dice your jalapeno. You can also grate your ginger in advance but I just grated mine directly into the pot while cooking!

Cooking

A big part of Indian cooking is the order in which you cook your ingredients. You always start with your aromatics or whole spices. This recipe doesn’t use much whole spice, but you’ll definitely want to start cooking the whole cumin seeds first. Mustard oil is traditional but any oil that can handle high heat will do. Throw some whole cumin seeds in your warm oil and cook them so that they infuse your oil with flavor without burning. Once they start to become fragrant, this is the time to throw in your diced onion. You want to get your onions at least translucent, but feel free to get a nice caramelization on them if you prefer your onions a little jammier. Then toss in your chopped garlic, grated ginger, and diced jalapeno.

Cook these delicious ingredients for a few minutes, making sure to stir so nothing burns (nothing ruins a dish like burned garlic). If your ingredients start to get dry, just add a little more oil to your pot. I like to add my powdered spices at this point, which gives them a little cook to avoid any raw spice taste while infusing your oil with more flavor before adding the wet ingredients. Next, add a squeeze of lemon juice and your spinach. If you’re using frozen spinach, you can throw it in directly. If you’re using fresh spinach, gradually incorporate your spinach until it cooks down. If you want to be fancy, you can put this whole mixture in a food processor to make it smooth like classic take-out saag, but I personally like a little texture in my saag. Make sure to sprinkle some salt into the mix as it all cooks together.

Once your spinach is cooked through, stir in some yogurt. The amount of yogurt depends on how creamy you’re feeling! For extra flavor, I recommend finishing with a spoon of ghee to add a richness and depth of flavor you can only get with clarified butter. And voila, delicious saag!

I had some leftover dal in the freezer, so I added that to the mix make saag dal, which made this a complete meal. Delicious paired with rice, roti, naan, paratha, or eaten plain.