Quick Dinner Recipes

: 15 Delicious Indian Meals Ready in 30 Minutes or Less

Quick Summary

The 15 Indian-inspired recipes listed here are quick and easy to prepare, taste wonderful, and can be made easily using either an Instant Pot or a pressure cooker when you are too tired at the end of the day to cook anything more sophisticated.

Deep Dive

This article is an exploration of how quickly and easily you can create wonderful Indian food using a pressure cooker or Instant Pot, as well as all the wonderful flavours and feelings associated with preparing Indian food that make up "comfort food".

Each recipe includes a brief description of the dish itself, so readers can know what to expect in terms of taste, feeling, ease of preparation, and taste and feeling.

Classic Moong Dal Khichdi

Moong Dal Khichdi is a great comfort food bowl; it's very forgiving on busy nights as it's quick to make and generally soft and warm to eat. The rice and dal become creamy together; it's the ultimate comfort food bowl, a hug in a bowl.

Adding ghee, cumin and hing gives this dish an extremely short tadka time and elevates the taste immediately.

Quick Rajma Curry

While Rajma typically requires a long time to cook, pressure cooking allows you to prepare Rajma in a short period with very little supervision while creating creamy, flavourful beans. The spices, tomatoes, garlic, ginger, and ginger combine into a rich, smooth gravy that envelops each kidney bean. It's wholesome, hearty and incredibly comforting. 

Instant Pot Paneer Masala

Thanks again to pressure cooking, Paneer Masala can be made in a matter of minutes. The onion and tomato base of Paneer Masala creates a rich and buttery gravy, which the Paneer absorbs. The flavour of the Paneer is mild and creamy, but it can also be made using many types of breads, such as rotis, parathas, and jeera rice or served as a side to other Indian dishes. When you want something that has an extravagant taste but takes no time or effort to prepare, Paneer Masala will do the trick.

Vegetable Pulao

Vegetable Pulao gives the impression that it is a complex 'made-with-love' dish. With whole spices releasing their aroma while cooking and mixed vegetables providing colour and sweetness, Vegetable Pulao is simple to prepare, as everything is cooked uniformly and comes out fluffy instead of soggy when prepared in a pressure cooker. Vegetable Pulao is an excellent meal for the week; it is so light on your stomach yet has plenty of flavour.

Lemon Rice with Tempered Peanuts

Lemon Rice is a quick fix if you have some leftover plain rice and don't want to eat it plain due to a lack of energy. A 'tadka' (finishing touch) of mustard seeds, turmeric, curry leaves, and peanuts will make ordinary leftover rice 'pop' with flavour and excitement. Adding lemon juice gives the dish brightness and acidity, while adding peanuts adds texture and crunch. It is a quick and easy dish that can be enjoyed for dinner, a packed lunch, or during late-night cravings and is full of comfort, tang, and taste.

Besan Kadhi (Quick Version)

Kadhi is generally a long, slow-cooked sauce that requires time for the flavours to develop and deepen; however, the use of a pressure cooker to cook Kadhi will produce an equally flavorful sauce in a fraction of the time. The mixture of besan and yoghurt naturally thickens, becoming rich and creamy, and then the tempered red chillies, cumin, and garlic provide the warm, inviting aroma we expect from Indian cooking.

Egg Curry

One of the quickest ways to cook a protein-rich meal is by making egg curry. You can boil your eggs ahead of time, or boil them while you prepare the gravy. Once everything is ready, you will have a thick, spicy, onion-tomato sauce that has been cooked in a pressure cooker. The eggs absorb the spices and will provide you with a hearty, filling dinner. This is a great meal for nights when you want something substantial but don’t want to have to follow too many steps.

Masala Oats Khichdi

Masala oats khichdi puts a new spin on the classic concept of comfort food. Using very few ingredients, oats take very little time to prepare—in fact, they only take about ten minutes. When cooked with dal, vegetables, and some spices, oats create a thick, comforting dish. It’s nutritious, packs a lot of fibre, and tastes better than you might expect. The cooker blends everything into a creamy risotto-like consistency, which makes it seem like a decadent alternative to other forms of healthy food.

Spinach Dal

Spinach dal is an example of how a healthy dish can also feed the soul. In just minutes, dal cooks up soft, and the spinach either pulverises or just mixes into the dal. The result is a mild, earthy dal, and the whole dish is hearty, full of protein, and works perfectly with a plate of rice, roti, or a scoop of ghee. It’s easy to prepare, wholesome, and makes for a healthy, quick meal during a busy week.

Aloo Matar Curry

Potatoes, peas, onions, and tomatoes are commonly found in the kitchen. Aloo matar is made from these basic ingredients, along with some spices, but the taste is much more complex than the ingredient list would lead one to believe. The method of cooking by pressure allows for the quick cooking of the potatoes, allowing them to become soft while keeping the peas intact. The gravy created is very light in texture and is somewhat spicy, but also very familiar. 

Tawa Paneer Bhurji

Paneer bhurji cooks up very quickly because of the way that crumbled paneer absorbs spices. By sautéing onions, tomatoes, capsicum, and green chillies together, the spiced-up paneer is then folded into the sautéed mixture to form a colourful, delicious, and fragrant base. The paneer becomes quite soft, rich, and tasty, making this dish an excellent source of protein.

Coconut Milk Vegetable Stew

The Kerala-style stew is a quick-cooking dish usually made in an instant pot or a stovetop pressure cooker. Pressure cooking the vegetables allows them to stay firm, while adding coconut milk to the mix adds creaminess and sweetness to the stew. Tossing in ginger, fresh curry leaves, and some whole spices creates a mellow, gentle heat; after cooking for a short period of time, this stew is ready to serve. 

Dal Tadka (Pressure Cooker Style)

The dal cooks to a creamy texture in just minutes using a pressure cooker, yielding the ideal basis for an intense tadka. When you add a ghee-sautéed combination of garlic, cumin, chilli, and spices to the finished dal, it is completely altered with flavours of smokiness and heat, ultimately resulting in a dish that has the taste of something served at a restaurant but is created with very little effort. 

Quick Chicken Curry

With a pressure cooker, chicken can become very tender within a matter of minutes, so you can have a rich and flavourful chicken curry on the dinner table in less than 30 minutes from starting to cook. Once the onions and tomatoes are cooked down to form a thick gravy, the spices penetrate deeply and rapidly into the chicken, and the overall result is a curry that is bold and satisfying, particularly when paired with rice or rotis.

Soya Chunk Masala

Soya chunks swell and soften in the pressure cooker, absorbing all the flavours of the gravy like tiny flavour sponges and producing a surprisingly hearty curry. They take on a meat-like texture after cooking and are added to the warmth, flavour, and richness of the tomato-onion masala gravy. A soya curry is also filling, budget-friendly and high in protein and great for vegetarians looking for a quick but substantial dinner.

Cooking with a pressure cooker or instant pot allows you to easily create great meals with common pantry staples in a short amount of time. These types of meals also demonstrate that you don't need to spend hours in the kitchen to eat well, just be smart about using your time and technique in the kitchen.