Tomato rasam | Thakkali rasam recipe | South Indian tomato soup | Tomato rasam without dal
Tomato rasam is a staple side dish for rice served for lunch in South India, prepared with tomatoes and few aromatic spices.
Ingredients
Ingredients:
- 4 tomatoes
- ¾ cup tamarind water
- 1 tsp oil
- ½ tsp mustard
- ½ tsp jeera
- 2 red chillies
- Few curry leaves
- 1 inch ginger
- ¼ tsp turmeric powder
- ½ tsp sambar powder
- ½ tsp rasam powder
- 1 tsp crystal salt
- 1 pinch asafoetida
- Coriander leaves
Instructions
Preparation:
- Soak small gooseberry size tamarind in a cup of hot water for 10mins.
- After ten minutes, squeeze and extract the pulp from the water and keep aside this tamarind water.
- Take 4 fully ripe tomatoes and grind them into a coarse mix. Instead, you can crush the tomatoes with your fingers nicely.
- I always prefer to keep the pulp of the crushed tomatoes in this thakkali rasam/tomato rasam. If you like a clear rasam you can filter out the skin and extra pulp from the tomato juice.
Recipe to make tomato rasam without dal:
- Heat oil or ghee in a kadai, add mustard and cumin(jeera) seeds.
- Let them splutter and add few curry leaves and split red chillies.
- Now pour the ground or crushed tomatoes with a cup of water.
- Put turmeric powder, sambar powder, and rasam powder.
- Also add tamarind water now and let the rasam come to a boil. If you don't have rasam powder with you, add pepper powder and jeera powder.
- Time to add slightly crushed ginger.
- You can add the required salt for the rasam now.
- Taste the sourness and salt level at this stage and add salt or a bit of water if required.
- Soon in few minutes rasam will become frothy and big bubbles will appear.
- At last, add a generous pinch of asafoetida.
- Sprinkle chopped coriander leaves and switch off the stove.
Notes
Tips: 1) I used a mix of country tomatoes and hybrid tomatoes. Country tomatoes are extra sour than hybrid ones. 2) Moreover, filter out the pulp if you like a clear rasam. 3) Instead of tempering first and boiling rasam, you can do the other way also, which is boiling tomato and tamarind water first with the spice powders and do tempering separately and add it to rasam later. Either way, this thakkali rasam tastes good. 4) If you add asafoetida while tempering in hot oil, it may give a mildly bitter taste to the rasam. Hence add asafoetida at last while the rasam boiling. 5) Ginger gives an excellent taste to this tomato rasam. If you are reluctant in using ginger, then you can use 4 garlic cloves instead. But remember NOT to use both ginger and garlic.
Nutrition
Calories: 100kcal
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