One of the biggest game changers for me with Indian cooking was the Instant Pot. Since we purchased one last summer during a big sale on Amazon, my life has forever been changed when cooking Indian food, especially when it comes to stews, beans, and biryani dishes. Another game changer was finding this incredible Indian cooking blog called My Heart Beets, which is hands down one of my all-time favorite food blogs. One of the best recipes she has on her blog is for onion masala, which basically has key components distilled down into a masala mix of tomatoes, onions, garlic, ginger, and various common Indian spices, all cooked in an Instant Pot, then frozen into 1/2 or 1/4-cup portions so that you can fish them out of your freezer and use them at any time to make authentic Indian food faster and easier.

I’ve since made a batch of this onion masala and have already used it for several dishes. The most rewarding dish I’ve used it for was just this morning, when I made Indian-style shakshuka in just 10 minutes! I took out about one cup of onion masala and defrosted it overnight, then I used that as the base for my shakshuka, just adding some crumbled sausage into the tomato mix, then eggs, and topping with cilantro and salt and pepper. It was one of the simplest, fastest, and most satisfying fully-homemade meals I’ve made in a long time.

The only way to have quick homemade meals is to do a lot of meal prep beforehand and in bulk, and this onion masala is definitely a key to that. Luckily for me, we have a much bigger freezer than before, so we can store things like this.