9 exotic Tori (Ridge Gourd) dishes perfect for weekend lunch

Tori, ridge gourd, or turai, is a light, hydrating vegetable widely used in Indian kitchens and valued for its gentle, easily digestible nature. This summer vegetable is rich in water content and low in calories, making it ideal for weight loss and healthy digestion. While the vegetable is mostly disliked for its bland taste, here we have given it a flavourful makeover, which will surely tempt your tastebuds. Try these interesting dishes which are a good source of dietary fiber, vitamin C, and essential minerals that will help boost immunity and promote skin health as well.

This is a rich and aromatic tori dish, where the vegetable is cooked in a cashew and tomato gravy and is topped with fresh malai, giving the dish a subtle sweetness and freshness, which goes well with roti or paratha.

To make this side dish, you need to make a slit in the tori lengthwise and then stuff it with chopped onion combined with achaar masala. Pan-fry it in mustard oil until soft and tender and serve hot with roti-dal or chawal-dal.

This is one of the most popular tori dishes. To make this one-pot meal, you need to cook soaked chana dal along with tori in a cooker in a tempering of mustard oil, cumin, hing, garlic, and green chilli. The spices used in this dish are turmeric and salt and the natural sweetness of the dish makes it an indulgent curry that can also be consumed like a soup. To make it even more interesting, one can add an extra tempering of onion and tomato, made with mustard oil and cumin. It only adds to the flavour of the sabzi.

It is an Andhra-style ridge gourd curry, where tori is cooked with coconut, curry leaves, and mustard seeds. It makes for a light yet aromatic main course dish.

For this semi-dry dish, you need bigger onion chunks, which are cooked along with tori in a kadhai on low flame. The sweetness of both veggies is combined with the kick of garam masala and black pepper, which goes well with plain roti as a lunch meal.

This is a gut-friendly curry, for which you need to pressure cook tori with soaked moong dal along with turmeric and salt. Add a tempering of ghee, cumin, and onion and enjoy it with plain roti or steamed rice. If you are someone who likes it spicy, then add a tadka of ghee and red chilli powder on top and enjoy the flavour.

This is for paneer lovers looking for an interesting preparation. Simply make a tempering of mustard oil, cumin, hing, and green chilli, and cook tori along with mashed paneer and minimal spices. Serve hot with roti or ajwain paratha.

For this side dish, saute grated tori in ghee, green chilli, and cumin. Once the moisture evaporates, add it to the sweetened curd along with spices like black pepper, roasted cumin, salt, black salt, and chaat masala. Mix well and serve with roti or pulao.

This is perfect for kids. All you need to do is, grate tori and saute it in a tempering of ghee and cumin seeds, add it to the dough and knead a dough using curd and salt. Roll out parathas and cook them on a preheated tawa using oil or ghee. Serve hot with pickle.

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