Tomato rasam
Preparation Time
10 minutes
Cooking Time
30 minutes
Difficulty Level
easy
Meal Type
Lunch
Serves 4
Key Ingredients
- Tamarind pulp
About This Recipe
Tomato rasam is the tomato-led member of the rasam family, the thakkali saaru of Karnataka and the thakkali rasam of Tamil Nadu. Where a plain rasam is tamarind water seasoned with pepper and cumin, this one gets most of its body and tang from ripe tomatoes, with tamarind playing a supporting part. If you want the plain version, the rasam recipe walks through it.
This version stews the tomatoes in the tempering itself, not in plain water: the ghee, mustard, curry leaves and chilli flavour the fruit as it softens, and the crushed tomatoes give the soup its pulpy body. Garlic goes into the spice crush rather than the tempering, so its heat comes through mellow. The toor dal is a quarter cup, whisked in for body and softness, and the tamarind's job is balance: five tomatoes carry the tang, and the 10 g of tamarind sharpens it.
The texture is thin and clear, closer to soup than to dal, with specks of crushed spice and nothing to thicken it. Serve it as a soup course or over rice. No mortar at hand? Two short pulses in a small grinder do the same job. Leave the dal out for a lighter pot, or push the pepper up to a heaped teaspoon for real heat.
Ingredient List
Serving Size:
1x
2x
3x
Dal
- Toor dal (arhar) — 1/4 cup
- Turmeric Powder — 1/4 tsp
- Water — 4 cups
Rasam
- Tomato, roughly chopped — 5 medium
- Tamarind pulp — 10 g
- Black peppercorns — 1 tsp
- Cumin Seeds — 1 tsp
- Coriander seeds — 1 tsp
- Garlic, peeled — 4 cloves
- Salt — 1 tsp
Tempering
- Ghee — 1 tbsp
- Mustard Seeds — 1/2 tsp
- Curry Leaves — 8 leaves
- Dry red chilli — 2 pieces
- Hing (asafoetida) powder — 1/4 tsp
To finish
- Fresh coriander leaves, chopped — 2 tbsp
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Serving Suggestions
Serve hot in small bowls as a first course with papad, or ladled over steamed rice with a spoon of ghee; a dry sabzi or poriyal beside it makes a light thali. It also works poured into a cup and sipped plain, the way many South Indian homes drink it at the end of a meal.
Tips for Cooking Tomato rasam
Ripeness decides the pot: soft, fully red tomatoes give body and tang, while pale ones make a thin, flat rasam. Press and strain the tamarind juice rather than tipping the pulp in; stray seeds and fibre sink to the bottom. Hold the pot at a gentle shimmer once the spices go in, and lift it off the flame for the hing, which burns in seconds.
Chef’s Note
The tomatoes do the work here: stewing them in the tempering, then crushing them in the pot, gives the rasam its body with no thickening at all. Each bowl works out to about 82 kcal, 2.8 g of protein and 1.3 g of fibre, with the ghee tempering bringing most of the fat.
Per serving (approx.): 82 kcal, protein 2.8 g, carbs 8.6 g, fat 3.9 g, fibre 1.3 g. Computed from IFCT 2017 / USDA values for the listed quantities. Measures: 1 cup = 240 ml, 1 tbsp = 15 ml, 1 tsp = 5 ml.
Happy Cooking
!!
ByCOWBERRY
Sep 17, 2026
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