Healthy Boiled Peanut Salad – Boiled Peanut Chaat

This Healthy Boiled Peanut Salad is a popular South Indian street food that is commonly sold on beaches. It makes for a complete meal or a delicious and healthy snack, is relatively high in protein, and comes together in no time. Follow my easy-to-follow, step-by-step recipe with photos.

Inspiration for Boiled Peanut Salad: Beaches, B*tches!

India is surrounded by the ocean and has GORGEOUS beaches. Unfortunately, a lot of these beaches aren’t fit for swimming in them. Don’t get me wrong, there are still beaches where you can swim in, so if you are looking for it, you will find it. In general, our beach culture growing up was visiting beaches with high currents, because it’s so fun to try and catch the waves and run away from them. The highlight was the street food they sell on the beaches. They sell different kinds of chaats ( traditional savory snacks sold by street vendors), icy drinks, and even chai.

Now, boiled peanut chaat is like the healthy sister of oil roasted peanut chaat. Both are commonly served in a newspaper cone and that screams nostalgia to me. That is how I was inspired to create this salad but also make it slightly better!

Ingredients and Substitutes for the Boiled Peanut Chaat/Salad

Peanuts: You need raw (as in non-roasted peanuts), with or without the skin. If you have a nut allergy, just replace this with chickpeas, sprouts, or any kind of cooked beans. Won’t be the same of course, but you gotta make it work for you 😉

Aromatics: Green chilies and chopped coriander/cilantro. You can skip out the green chili if you’ve got a baby mouth but I highly recommend it. Try to build your heat resistance slowly. You can add also use mint leaves in this salad.
Vegetables: I highly recommend adding tomatoes, cucumber and red onion. You can add or remove any veg from this. You can add lettuce for more volume if this is a meal.

Seasoning and spices: Lemon juice, chaat masala, red chili powder, salt. You can add roasted cumin powder, some sumac, etc. Don’t overdo it though. Keeping the spices simple is the key to making this salad/chaat just right. Chaat masala is all you need sometimes.

Step by Step Guide to Make Boiled Peanut Salad

This is a highly customizable recipe where you can add and delete ingredients according to convience. Follow these steps for your next favourite salad:

1. The first step to making this boiled peanut salad is to slice up the cucumber and tomato and salt it. Salting draws out the moisture from these watery veggies and helps keep the salad crunchy. and less soggy even if you refrigerate it for a day. Set this aside for 30 minutes while you prep the peanuts.

2. Then, wash the peanuts and then add enough water and salt to cook the peanuts. You can pressure cook for 12 minutes or boil in a pan for 25 minutes. If pressure cooked, wait for the pressure to naturally leave the cooker.

3. Once the peanuts are cooked, it’s time to build the salad. Start by squeezing out the liquid from the vegetables through a sieve.

4. Add the peanuts, cucumbers, tomatoes, chopped red onion, and green chili to a bowl.

5. Then add the seasonings (red chili powder, chaat masala), a squeeze of lemon juice, and chopped coriander to this bowl. I don’t add salt yet because the peanuts and veg were salted. So taste the salad before adding salt to it.

6. Toss everything and serve immediately. You can also refrigerate this and serve later.

Storage:

This salad lasts in the fridge in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

It would make me so happy if you give this recipe a try! If you do, hit me up on Instagram or comment down below. I would love to hear what you think.

Check out other healthy street food recipes from the blog:

• Vegan Kathi Roll
• Vegan Yoghurt Toast – Spicy
• Baked Aloo Tikki – Crispy and Healthy
• Tofu masala sandwich