Indian Salad Recipes
Many of the salads here are built to be a full meal, not a side: paneer and roasted chickpeas over yogurt in the chaat-style ones, quinoa and edamame for crunch that survives a lunchbox, crispy rice in the Thai-inspired nam khao, and watermelon with feta for the ones meant to be eaten cold on a hot day.
Most salads in this section are built to be the whole meal, not the thing next to it. That is the rule the category follows: make protein one of the highlights, as paneer, chickpeas, kidney beans, edamame, or quinoa, so a portion keeps you full and carries you to the next meal instead of leaving you hunting for a snack an hour later.
Pick by what you need the salad to do. The chaat-style bowls, paneer chaat and chana chaat, are the ones to make when you want tamarind, pomegranate, and crunch, eaten the same day. The quinoa and bean salads hold up in a lunchbox for two days, so they are the meal-prep picks. Watermelon feta and mango salsa are the hot-day, no-cook options that come together in ten minutes.
One technique note that runs through most of these: when paneer or chickpeas go in, roast or air-fry them first and dress them while still warm. Cold paneer straight from the fridge is what makes a salad taste like a diet plate. A few minutes of dry heat fixes that.
