Easy Ayurvedic Recipes: 12 Simple Dishes for Beginners

Easy Ayurvedic recipes rely on a handful of ingredients: basmati rice, mung beans or red lentils, seasonal vegetables, ghee and a few gentle spices (cumin, coriander, turmeric, ginger, cardamom, fennel). The twelve dishes below take 5 to 40 minutes, need no special technique, and cover a whole day: drinks, breakfast, mains, sides. Start with kitchari: it is the pivot of Ayurvedic cooking.

The minimal pantry to get started

Aisle	What to have
Grains	Basmati rice, rolled oats, fine semolina
Legumes	Split yellow mung (or red lentils), chickpeas in jars or cans
Fats	Ghee (or unsalted butter to make your own), sunflower oil
Spices	Cumin seeds, ground coriander, turmeric, fresh ginger, cardamom, fennel seeds
Fresh	Lemons, fresh coriander (cilantro), plain yoghurt, milk or plant milk

Six spices are enough for all twelve recipes. To go further, our spice guide introduces the next ones.

In 5 to 10 minutes: drinks and sides

1. Cumin-coriander-fennel tea (10 min) — half a teaspoon of each seed simmered in a litre of water, sipped warm through the day. Ayurveda’s classic tea.
2. Golden milk (8 min) — hot milk, turmeric, a pinch of pepper, cinnamon, ginger; honey goes in off the heat.
3. Cucumber-mint raita (5 min) — yoghurt, grated cucumber, toasted cumin: the cooling side for spiced dishes, at lunchtime.
4. Digestive lassi (5 min) — very diluted yoghurt, cumin, ginger, salt: to drink at the end of lunch.

In 10 to 20 minutes: breakfast and basics

5. Warm spiced porridge (10 min) — oats cooked in milk with cinnamon, cardamom and dates, a drizzle of ghee.
6. Upma (20 min) — toasted semolina, diced vegetables, mustard and cumin seeds: South India’s savoury breakfast.
7. Cumin rice (jeera rice) (20 min) — everyday basmati, scented in 30 seconds with cumin sizzled in ghee.
8. Lemon rice (10 min with rice cooked that day) — mustard seeds, turmeric, cashews, lemon juice.

In 25 to 40 minutes: main dishes

9. Kitchari (35 min) — rice and mung cooked together with cumin, coriander, turmeric and ginger. A complete, gentle dish that tradition considers the most digestible of all.
10. Mung dal (40 min) — yellow mung cooked until creamy, then a cumin tadka in ghee poured over. Serve with cumin rice.
11. Red lentil soup (25 min) — lentils, carrot, ginger, turmeric: the ideal light dinner.
12. Cauliflower curry (25 min) — cauliflower and peas with gentle spices, no cream, no fierce chilli.

A first day of meals with these recipes

Moment	Recipes
On waking	A glass of warm water, then the warm spiced porridge (5)
Lunch	Cumin rice (7), mung dal (10), raita (3), digestive lassi at the end (4)
Afternoon	Cumin-coriander-fennel tea (1)
Dinner	Red lentil soup (11) or kitchari (9)
Evening	Golden milk if you digest it well (2)

The principle: the most nourishing meal at midday, a light and early dinner. For a whole week with the shopping list, see our 7-day Ayurvedic meal plan.

5 beginner mistakes to avoid

• Burning the tadka spices: 20 to 30 seconds is enough; they should smell fragrant, not blacken.
• Forgetting to rinse rice and mung: that is what prevents a sticky texture and foam.
• Making everything very hot: Ayurvedic cooking is fragrant, rarely fiery.
• Serving cold what should be warm, especially in winter.
• Changing everything at once: one new recipe a week is plenty.

Why cooking for yourself is worth it

Research doesn’t test “Ayurvedic cooking”, but it does look at the habit of cooking. In the United States, a cross-sectional analysis of 9,569 adults linked cooking dinner six to seven times a week with lower sugar and fat intake than among those who rarely cook (Wolfson and Bleich, 2015). In France, among more than 40,000 adults, planning meals was associated with a more varied diet (Ducrot et al., 2017). These are associations, not proof of cause and effect, but they support simple, home-cooked recipes like these.

Precautions

These are everyday dishes. Adapt them for allergies (tree nuts, dairy, gluten: asafoetida is often cut with wheat flour), and ask your doctor before a major dietary change if you have a chronic condition, take anticoagulants (turmeric in large amounts) or are pregnant. See our safety guide.

To go further, our practical guide “The Everyday Ayurvedic Kitchen” brings together forty simple recipes on printable cards, four weeks of meal plans and tick-box shopping lists.