You might also like this recipe for roasted carrots. This Curried Carrots Salad with Cherry Tomatoes is summer on a plate. It is bright, fresh and healthy, with bold flavors that grab your tastebuds and make them do a happy dance. The salad itself is made in an Indian style, with a tempering of curry leaves, black mustard seeds, red pepper flakes and turmeric. On top of it all goes a spritz of fresh lemon juice. The flavors balance out perfectly with the sweetness of the carrots and tomatoes, the spice of red pepper flakes, and the tang of the lime. There is some cooking in this recipe, mainly to make the carrots tender and tantalizing and to also for the tempering, of course. But the cooking’s done in under 10 minutes, so you’re not spending a ton of time over the hot stove.
Prepping the carrots
I like to cut the carrots into coins, but that said, I also sometimes grate it. Grating the carrot, IMO, gives you less carrot flavor. The carrots also cook much faster. But I do love the pretty look of the coins. When you grate the carrots, this recipe resembles a kosambari, which is how you’d describe, in parts of India, a salad made with cucumbers, carrots or other veggies by grating them, then tempering them with spices. Growing up, we ate lots of kosambari because it’s a popular dish in the south Indian state of Karnataka, where my father comes from. I cut the carrots into very thin rounds, about an eighth of an inch, which not only makes it easy to cook them quickly, it also gives the carrots a silky texture with just a slight bite that’s quite wonderful.
Do you need cherry tomatoes or will another kind do?
They will, but I just love the look of the cherry tomatoes in here. The dish looks even prettier when you have red or purple tomatoes, which add more color. The only kind I had were yellow and orange, and they kinda merge into the carrots, especially when photographed. If you use regular tomatoes, cut them into long, thin strips and deseed them first. Check to get new recipe updates by email.
How long does it take to put this recipe together?
15 minutes, I promise. Especially if you’re using a food processor to slice your carrots, and if you have one, why would you not? The processor does a much better job of cutting even, thin slices and it takes under a minute to slice four carrots. If you’ve got knife skills to top that, I am jealous. And can you come be my kitchen helper please?
Ingredients
Carrots Cherry tomatoes Coconut oil Black mustard seeds Asafetida (optional) Curry leaves Red pepper flakes Turmeric Lemon juice Cilantro
Serve
This is the kind of side that’s versatile enough to go with almost anything you’re planning on serving. A burger, a tofu or tempeh steak, a pizza, a pasta, a stew, a dal…it’s all good eats with this salad on the side. Now that we’ve got all of that sorted out, let’s go to the recipe. It’s easy, I promise you, and if you try it, you’ll love it.
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