North Indian Recipes195 authentic family recipes

North Indian cuisine isn't one cuisine — it's a half-dozen overlapping regional traditions that share a love of wheat, dairy, and slow-simmered curries. From the tandoor-cooked breads of Punjab to the dum biryanis of Lucknow, the kebab streets of Old Delhi, and the dal-roti weeknight dinners of Uttar Pradesh, this is the food that most of the world calls when they call "Indian food".

The flavour anchors are clear: onion-tomato masala (the foundation of every dhaba dal), garam masala (warm and complex, not hot), kasoori methi (dried fenugreek that perfumes butter chicken and dal makhani), and the trinity of cumin-coriander-chilli. Dairy is everywhere — paneer, yogurt, butter, malai, cream — but so are the dry, restrained Banarasi vegetable dishes that prove North India can do subtle when it wants to.

Our North Indian recipes cover both the famous (butter chicken, dal makhani, paneer tikka, chicken tikka masala) and the dishes that don't make it onto restaurant menus (the Uttar Pradesh dum aloo, the Banarasi chooda matar, the Lucknowi shahi paneer). About a third are vegan-adaptable; we've flagged dairy substitutions where they work.