Ultimate Chutney Lineup

Ultimate Chutney Lineup including Cilantro mint chutney, Date tamarind chutney & Spicy garlic chutney.

If you ask me if there are any food items I cannot survive without, it has to be these amazing Indian chutneys. Cilantro mint chutney, Date tamarind chutney & Spicy garlic chutney are three staple chutneys you’ll always find in my fridge. Having such flavorful sauces/chutneys/dipping sauces handy will make your week meals lot more fun and exciting!

There are few things I would like to mention in order to get the best results with your chutney making. First things first, good quality blender. I am a huge fan of Vitamix as well as BEAST. I am sure you must be wondering if you need them both, especially them being on pricey side. Being a food blogger and also having a big family to feed, I tend to go for easy quick and effective kitchen gadgets, hence I own both and love both. If you are to pick one, I would say way in your usability.

Vitamix is on pricey side, but in my opinion one of the best one out there. However, you do end up spending a bit extra on different attachments and honestly they are all worth the money. I personally have Vitamix 6300 with wet container and dry container as well as a single serve smoothie attachment. If you are to own all these attachments for Vitamix, you can definitely avoid getting BEAST. If you are looking for something reasonable, BEAST is your wiser choice. It is small, compact, great for all wet grinding.

I like to use BEAST for small batch of chutneys, while Vitamix for big batched. Especially when I am in mood for freezing them for future use. One feature I like lot more in Vitamix compared to BEAST, is that there is a pusher thing it comes with. This plastic rod looking thing helps you push down ingredients while blending without adding extra water to it. BEAST does require you to put certain amount of liquid while bending. These are some of the pointer I hope helps you figure out which blender to get.

Now that we have sorted out what blender is good, especially for chutney. Let’s talk ingredients. For cilantro mint chutney and garlic chutney, you are going to be okay picking fresh ingredients as mentioned below. For date tamarind chutney I highly recommend getting big juicy pitted dates. Costco carries good once! And other two ingredients are jaggery and tamarind concentrate. Try finding a little loose dark jaggery instead of powder one, honestly either will do fine but I have always used soft dark kind and absolutely love.

For tamarind, I highly suggest you get good quality tamarind concentrate. Both pitted dates and tamarind concentrate will help with getting smooth creamy texture. If you are using tamarind and dates with pits, you will have to strain the boiled mixture which is lot more work than it should be! One last thing I want to mention is that I love using these small squeeze bottles to store weekly chutney for easy use. I make small batches of each of them and pour them into these small squeeze bottles. They stay good upto 5-7 days in the fridge and great for chaat, sandwiches, paninis, burgers, wraps, kebobs, salads etc.

I hope you find the above pointers helpful. Below are detailed recipes for all three chutneys. Hope you make them and like them as much as I do.

Happy & Healthy Eating!

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Cilantro Mint Chutney

Cilantro Mint Chutney – spicy green chutney made with fresh cilantro & mint that is the heart of Indian street food, especially chaats!!

Course Side Dish

Cuisine Indian

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 5 minutes minutes

Servings 8 oz mason jar full

Author Hetal Desai

Equipment

• Blender Preferably Vitamix

Ingredients

• 1 bunch cilantro (large bunch) properly cleaned, washed, just a little trimmed stems, 1 large bunch should yield 3 tightly packed cups
• ½ cup mint leaves properly cleaned, washed and separated leaves. Tightly packed 1/2 cup
• 3 cloves garlic small cloves
• 1 inch Ginger Root peeled
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 Large Serrano washed, less for less spicy (can be sub with 2 thai green chilis)
• 1 tbsp Oil Preferably peanut oil
• 1 tbsp Lemon Juice
• ½ tsp cumin seeds
• 8 Cashews unsalted raw cashews
• 4 tbsp Cold Water more or less based on desired consistency

Instructions

• Put all ingredients into a blender and blend it till smooth. You can leave it just a little chunky if you like that consistency! Enjoy it on sandwiches, chaat, paratha, kachori, samosa and lot more!!
• Please refer to notes below for tips!

Notes

You can make this in big batch and freeze it in those big ice cube trays. Once it freezes, take them out and store them in freezer in double zip bags for later use. Take few out of the freezer and enjoy the freshness of it as needed!

Adding cashew is options, if you choose to skip, use only 2 tbsp of water.

Make sure yo drain all the water out of cilantro and mint after washing. I like to spin them in salad spinner to get rid of as much water as possible. If you feel like you are not able to remove most of the water, add none or less water while making the chutney.

Adding oil helps keeping it green.