Aloo Gobi

Variations

• Aloo gobi matar: Add green peas.
• Gravy version: Add a little water for a saucier curry.
• Air fryer: Pre-roast the potato and cauliflower for extra nuttiness.
• Spicier: Add more green chili and chili powder.

Tips

• Cut the potato and cauliflower to a similar size so they cook evenly.
• Cover and cook low so it steams tender without sticking or burning.
• Bloom the spices in the oil first (tadka) to bring out their aroma.
• Add the garam masala at the end to keep its fragrance.
• "Cut them to a similar size" is the one tip above worth arguing with. Knife skills says uniform size is a cooking decision rather than a cosmetic one — and that holds when the pieces are the same material. Potato and cauliflower are not. Potato is dense and about four-fifths water; cauliflower florets are looser and closer to nine-tenths, and they collapse well before diced potato is tender. Matching them by eye gives you either crunchy potato or cauliflower mush. Cut the potato smaller than the florets, or give it a five-minute head start under the lid before the cauliflower goes in.
• No water goes in, and the lid is the whole cooking method. This is a sukhi sabzi, a dry curry: the liquid it steams in is the water inside the cauliflower, driven out by the heat and kept in by the lid. That is why it is cooked low and covered and why the "gravy version" in the variations is a genuinely different dish rather than a wetter one — dal and chana masala build a sauce, this one deliberately does not.
• Turmeric is doing a different job from the other spices. Its colour sits in curcumin, which is fat-soluble and barely dissolves in water — so it needs the oil, and stirred into liquid instead it stays chalky and slightly bitter. That is the specific reason step 3 gives it a moment in the fat before anything wet arrives, and blooming spices caps ground spice at roughly thirty seconds in the pan before it turns bitter.
• The garam masala at the end is the same guide's rule, not a flourish. It lists garam masala among the things added off the heat, and notes it is often added a second time at the end even in India — a blend built on cardamom, clove and cinnamon has nothing to gain from twenty minutes under a lid. Serve with chapati or naan.