This tomato onion gravy is the simplest and easiest sauce that you can make for all your curries! Just add potatoes or paneer and your curry is ready!
Table of Contents
Tomato Onion Gravy
Tomato Onion gravy is a gravy base prepared with tomatoes and onions, which serve as a wonderful base for several Indian curries and gravies.
You can prepare this gravy and use it whenever you need to make a side dish for your rotis – you have to just heat up this gravy base with some oil and add in the cooked vegetables or paneer.
It makes your weeknight dinners an easy breeze with one less thing to do.
Why do I make this Tomato Onion Gravy every week?
When I eat rotis, I love a nice smooth curry to go along with it. I definitely think there is something fulfilling about tearing off a piece of roti and scooping up some vegetables along with a rich gravy sauce. Now, if you also think similarly, this recipe is definitely for you.
So, before I learnt and perfected this recipe, I was making gravies in the long and tedious way too. I have to say, that method involved way too much time standing around the stove and waiting for the tomatoes and onions to cook down. This wasn’t very appealing to me.
Now, this recipe has none of the waiting around. The reason for it is that of the use of my favourite kitchen appliance – the pressure cooker! If you are a fan of using your pressure cooker to make your life simpler, keep reading on.
Ingredients needed for the Tomato onion gravy
To make this sauce, you are going to need the two main ingredients – tomatoes and onions. The ratio of tomatoes to onions is simple – for every kilogram of tomatoes, you can use two medium-sized onions.
The other ingredients are ginger and garlic. An Indian curry isn’t a curry without these two ingredients. A good thumb sized piece of ginger for every kilo of tomatoes is your ideal ratio. In India, cloves of garlic are small, so it is safe to use 10-12 cloves for this recipe. If you are in a place in the world where the cloves are large, you may use 3-4 cloves.
Next comes the heat – dried red chillies. These provide a nice hit of heat as well as the lovely deep red colour to the gravy. This recipe calls for 3-4 red chillies, but you can add a few more according to your taste.
Bay leaves are optional, but they do add great flavour to the overall gravy. So, I think you must use them!
How to make this best and easy tomato onion gravy?
You can start off by washing the tomatoes and then cutting them into quarters. You can also cut them into halves, but I prefer them in quarters as it makes removing the skin easier after the pressure cooking.
Peel and dice the onions into quarters.
Wash the ginger and peel the skin. Cut the ginger into smaller pieces since it makes it easier to cook and grind.
You can next, peel and de-skin 10-12 small cloves of garlic. I mostly buy the peeled garlic available on most online platforms or my closest Bangalore Hopcoms – makes it easy, I say!
Begin by placing a pressure cooker on the stove on a medium-high heat. You can add the chopped tomatoes, onions, ginger, garlic, dried red chillies and bay leaves. The tomatoes do have enough water in them for the whistles, but I prefer to add a 1/4 cup of water. Close the lid and allow for 2-3 whistles to pass.
Turn off the pressure cooker and let the pressure come down naturally. Wait for all the ingredients to cool down as well.
Once the pressure cooker has cooled down, pick the pieces of tomatoes and remove the skin – they should come off easily. Now add these peeled tomatoes to a mixer jar. Fish out the cooked onions, red chillies, garlic and ginger from the pressure cooker and add them to the mixer. You may leave out the bay leaves and the remaining water.
Grind all these ingredients to a smooth paste and transfer to a clean and dry jar. Your tomato onion gravy is ready to make your favourite curries.
What curries can I make with this Tomato Onion gravy?
“Indian Curry”
This tomato onion gravy will serve as a base for any sort of “Indian curry” that you want to make.
In a pan, add a tablespoon of oil and add any whole spices you want. Sauté the spices in the oil for under a minute.
Now, add any vegetable of your choice – potatoes, peas, cauliflower, haricot beans, etc. Add a bit of water and allow the vegetables to cook for about 5-7 minutes. If you want to make Aloo-Matar curry, the potatoes and peas should cook in about 5 minutes (smaller the size of the aloo, the faster it cooks). Once they are cooked, add the tomato onion gravy and let it simmer for another five minutes. Turn off the flame and add a small pat of butter and chopped coriander.
If you want to use baby potatoes or chickpeas, get them cooked separately with some salt. All you will need to do is add them to the gravy. You can add garam masala, Channa masala, coriander powder, jeera powder to this gravy and achieve the taste that you are going for.
If it is paneer curry that you want to make, it is pretty straightforward. You can just add the paneer to the gravy and allow to simmer for a few minutes. The Paneer Masala curry will be ready in less than 10 minutes.
Makhni Gravy
If you wish to make a makhni gravy, you need the gravy to be a thick and rich. To make this happen, you have to add a handful of cashew nuts (80-100g) to the pressure cooker along with the rest of the ingredients. When you grind the tomatoes and onions with these cashews, the gravy will be rich and thick.
In a pan, you can start off with a small pat of butter along with a tablespoon of cooking oil. Add whole spices like cardamom, cinnamon and star anise. Sauté the spices in the butter and oil for a few seconds. Now add this thick gravy to the pan and mix it well. Adjust salt levels and you now add panner to this gravy. Let the gravy simmer for 4-5 minutes and then you can turn off the flame. To make this gravy even richer, you can finish off the curry with another (big) pat of butter! Yum!
Pasta Sauce
If you wish to make pasta sauce using this method, the ingredients you need to omit from pressure cooking are ginger and dried red chillies. You can increase the quantity of garlic by a few more cloves.
Once the cooking is done, add the ingredients to the mixer jar along with a few leaves of basil, one teaspoon of tomato paste, salt and pepper. Let all of them blend well and your pasta sauce is ready!
Add this sauce to the cooked pasta and season the sauce with oregano and finish it off with grated parmesan. Your pasta is ready for serving!
Dal
You can also use this tomato onion gravy to make a flavorful dal by adding 2-3 tablespoons of the tomato onion gravy to the dal and allowing it to simmer for a few minutes.
Tips and Tricks
If you end up adding more red chillies and you feel that the gravy got too spicy, you can add a tablespoon or two of sugar to reduce to the heat. You can also add curd to bring down the heat.
You can also add cloves, cardamom or fennel seeds while pressure cooking the tomatoes and onions. When you blend all the ingredients, you will have a slightly different but equally delicious taste to which you may add your vegetable of choice.
Shelf Life and Storage
This gravy can be stored in the fridge for up to 5 days and used for various recipes during the week.
If you wish to freeze the gravy, there will be an extra step in preserving the gravy in oil. To a pan, add 2-3 tablespoons of cooking oil, and add the gravy to it. Add required amount of salt and allow the gravy to simmer for 15-20 minutes. This step will ensure the removal of moisture from the gravy, thereby increasing its shelf life. Keep stirring and once you see that the oil has left the gravy and risen to the side of the pan, you can turn off the heat. Allow the gravy to cool down and store it in a clean glass or stainless steel container.
It’ll be great if you tag me on Instagram @ Make Potato when you make this recipe
Please do leave a rating and a comment if you can, on the recipe below – it will help me grow and reach more food lovers like you.
Recipe
Tomato Onion Gravy for curries
Ingredients
- 1 Kg Tomatoes roughly 10-12 medium sized ones
- 2 Onions medium sized
- 10-20 gm Ginger about the size of your thumb
- 8-10 cloves Garlic
- 3-4 Dried Red Chillies
- 2 Bay Leaf
Instructions
- Wash and cut the tomatoes into quarters. You can remove the seeds if you want. Removing the seeds give the gravy a smoother texture.
- Peel the onions and cut into quarters.
- Wash, peel and dice the ginger. Peel and keep aside the cloves of garlic.
- To a pressure cooker, add the tomatoes, onions, ginger, garlic, red chillies, and bay leaves. Add a small cup of water.
- Close the lid and allow for 2 whistles to come through. (This should be done in 5-7 minutes)
- Allow the pressure to completely come down and let the ingredients in the pressure cooker cool down as well.
- Remove the skin of the tomatoes and add it to the mixer jar for making the gravy.
- Take out all the cooked onions, garlic, ginger, red chillies and add it to the mixer jar.
- Do not add the bay leaves or the remaining water from the cooker.
- Grind the ingredients into a smooth puree. Your Tomato Onion gravy is ready.
If you are looking for more Chutney and Pickle Recipes, please click here.
Do follow me on Instagram at Make Potato — I post daily lunch box ideas and quick snack recipes.
