Classic Tomato Rice
Classic Tomato Rice
Today we’re dipping into my favorite South Indian flavored rice – Classic Tomato Rice also known as Thakkali Pongal. Much like my Classic Lemon Rice, this is a simple recipe that packs a punch of flavor to cooked white rice. This is my personal favorite of the Indian-flavored kinds of rice. It easily comes together with tomatoes, onion, and some staple Indian spices. Classic Tomato Rice has a more robust flavor when compared to my classic lemon rice and, therefore, can be easily paired with a greater variety of sides. This recipe is also great in the summer time when you can use up all your fresh tomatoes for a quick batch!
Why You’ll Love This Classic Tomato Rice:
- Simple Preparation: While this rice requires some patients to get the tomatoes into a stew, it still requires just a few simple steps and ingredients. I cook the white rice in my Oster Rice Cooker, add the stewed tomatoes, and mix together the spices to get our final dish.
- Versatility: As I mentioned above, this rice can be added to almost ANY dinner. It’s flavorful and so easy to pair with simply prepared chicken and vegetables. If you’d like to get creative, this rice can also be an easy base for your favorite Indian curries.
This tomato rice is great paired with many different types of recipes.
The Process
The process is quite simple and just requires a little patience. The best place to start is to cook the rice! Using either the stovetop or a rice cooker, cook up the rice to allow it enough time to finish and cool. Next, dice up your tomatoes and a large onion. You can rough chop the tomatoes, since we’ll be stewing them, we won’t recognize the pieces by the end.
Prep your tomatoes!
Next, we’ll heat up our pan. Grab a large non-stick pan that can eventually handle all the tomatoes and onion you diced. We’ll heat up a few tablespoons of vegetable oil and fry the mustard seeds and dried red chilies. Be sure to wait until the oil is really hot before adding. Let them brown for about 30 seconds before adding the onions.
Brown the onions before finally adding the tomatoes. We’ll let the tomatoes cook on medium heat for about 20-25 minutes. Be sure to keep it to medium, up to medium-high heat, and do not allow the tomatoes to dry out. We’re looking for the tomatoes to become almost sauce-like. Accordingly, feel free to press them with the back of a wooden spoon to smush them and help the sauce cook a bit faster. During this time, we’ll stir in some turmeric powder and salt.
This is the key to tomato rice. Frying the tomatoes and spices together.
Hopping back over to the rice, once it’s cooked, spread the rice out in a casserole or other larger dish. This will allow more of the rice to hit the air and help it cool faster. Spoon the tomato mixture over top of the finished rice and mix together well. In practice, I have always seen this mixing process done by hand – being sure to wait for everything to cool! Using a hand will allow you to use your fingers to break up the rice more and ensure each grain is coated in the tomato mixture. Taste and add more salt, as needed.
Now it’s time to mix the sautéed tomatoes in with the white rice.
Finally, we’ll fry up a garnish of channa dal (split dried chickpeas) and urad dal. In a small pan, heat some vegetable oil similar to what we did earlier in the process. Once the oil is nice and hot, add in the lentils and watch carefully while they toast. Pour over the rice mixture and mix well. You can serve the rice up immediately!
Per Indian culture, just get your hand in there and eat some tomato rice.
My Easy Southern Style Madras Chicken recipe goes great with this Classic Tomato Rice.
If you make this recipe, I’d love to see pictures of your creations on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok! Hashtag them #thehappyhaandi. And tag me @thehappyhaandi.
Classic Tomato Rice
Equipment
- Rice Cooker
- Frying Pan
Ingredients
- 3 cups White (Long Grain Rice)
- 6 Plum Tomatoes (diced)
- 1 Large Onion (diced)
- 5-6 Dried Red Chilies
- 1 tsp Mustard Seeds
- 2 tbsp Channa Dal (Dried Split Chickpeas)
- 1 tbsp Urad Dal
- 2-3 tsp Salt
- 1/4 tsp Turmeric Powder
- 6 tbsp Vegetable Oil
Instructions
For the Tomato Rice:
- Cook the white rice and spread it in a wide container to cool.
- In a large non-stick pan, heat 3 tbsp vegetable oil and fry the mustard seeds and dried chilies. The mustard seeds will pop! Give them a second before adding the chilies. About 30 seconds or until the mustard seeds are browned.
- Add the diced onion and fry until brown. Add in the tomatoes, 1 tsp of salt, and turmeric next.
- Once the tomatoes have started to bubble, reduce the heat to about medium. We're looking to slowly stew the tomatoes without letting them dry out. Keep them on the heat for about 25-30 minutes, until the tomatoes have turned almost into a sauce-like texture.
- Once the consistency is nice and mushy, remove from heat and add to the spread-out rice. Mix well being sure that the rice is coated thoroughly.
- Finally, in a small non-stick pan, heat up the remaining 3 tbsp of vegetable oil. When the oil is almost smoking, add in the split dried chickpeas and urad dal and toast in the oil. Be careful! They toast quickly! The second you see them brown, remove them from heat and pour over the tomato rice.
- Mix this in well and serve immediately!
Notes
Recipe Notes:
- This rice can be pretty perishable. Keep it refrigerated and be sure to finish it up in no more than a week.
- This recipe makes 3 cups of rice but to make your own measurements there are some good rules of thumb for ratios:
- 2-3 tomatoes per cup of rice
- 2 dried red chilies per cup of rice
- While this recipe uses plum tomatoes, I've found that you really can use any type of tomato! I've mixed together cherry tomatoes with plum and beefsteak to arrive at the desired amount I need for the rice. A good way to think about this is to think in terms of a plum tomato size. So, 6-7 cherry tomatoes look about the same quantity as 1 plum tomato. A REALLY large beefsteak tomato can get you 2-3 plum tomatoes.
- I always hazard towards more tomato versus less (and, accordingly, more onion). If you make too much, you can always freeze the remainder!
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