How To Make Green Chilli Paste – Meal Prep

Indian food always includes spices, be it dry spices or wet spices. You’ll often find our recipes calling for ginger garlic paste or chili ginger pastes or some combination of these ingredients. And even if they’re not pastes, Indian recipes almost always have chilies or ginger and garlic in them in some form or the other.

So, for the recipes that require pastes, we prefer not to have to grind them every time. It’s easier to just make a lot of chili paste at one go and store it in the refrigerator for use whenever we need it. Saves time, saves energy, saves electricity from not running the mixie every time!

So here’s how to make a normal chili ginger garlic paste at one go and store it up for use in Indian curries and other dishes.

What Ingredients do you Need to make the ginger garlic paste?

All you need is a few pods of garlic, some green chilies, and ginger, and you can play around with the quantities.

How To Make The Ginger Garlic Paste?

Clean the garlic and remove the skin, roughly chop the ginger to bits, and break the chillies in halves. Next, grind all these ingredients together in the mixer or food processor till they form a paste.

Refrigerate and use over the next few months. Whenever a recipe requires ginger-garlic paste or ginger-chilli paste or garlic-chili paste, even if it’s just any two of these 3 ingredients, this glutenfree spicy chili paste is a quick substitute. The addition of the third ingredient only works to enhance the flavor of the dish. Well, except for some cases, but then if you’re in a hurry, you can still use it. It’s a zillion times better than store-bought pastes any day!

Also remember that you can usually use this chili paste as a replacement for green chilies. We add it to kasuri murgh, meatball curry, mota vaal curry, and other dishes when we’re in a hurry.

Cooking Tips and Tricks

• Cleaning the garlic means separating the garlic flakes from the pod and remove the skin.
• Don’t add salt to the mix. You could if you want to, but it will be difficult to measure out for recipes later. It’s just easier to add salt to the recipes during the final preparation of the dish.
• Cut it into about one-inch-sized pieces or whatever size your mixer can handle.
• You can make different combinations, garlic + chillies, or chilies + ginger, or just ginger + garlic too. 
• If you prefer, you can add a few tablespoons of lime juice to the paste before storing it. It acts as a preservative and prevents spoilage.
• Store this homemade chili paste with ginger/garlic in an airtight container in the freezer for up to 6 months or in the refrigerator for a few weeks.

Other Paste combinations

1. 1 part ginger to 1 part chillies
2. 2 parts garlic to 1 part chillies

Answering your Questions about Ginger Garlic paste

Why add Garlic Ginger Paste to dishes?

Both garlic and ginger have various health benefits. So adding the ginger garlic paste to what you’re cooking goes a long way in making your dishes tastier and healthier.

Do I Need To Remove The Ginger Skin?

You can remove the thicker part of the ginger skin by scraping it off when you wash it. A little skin is okay to use.

Recipes where you can Substitute Different Ginger/Garlic/Chilli Paste Combinations for the Full Ingredients

• Indian Potato Veg called Batata Bhaji
• Goat Feet Curry aka Mutton Paya Khudi
• Fenugreek Sprout Recipe
• Goat Tripe Curry
• Kasuri Murgh Methi