Kovakkai Thoran is a very simple accompaniment prepared by adding ground coconut mixture with the cooked Kovakkai. This goes as a side dish with any South Indian meals. In this recipe we don't add onion / garlic. But if you like, you can add onion and serve it either ways. Kovak’kai’ (tender vegetable) is good for making curry but not the kovai’pazham’ (ripe) . When you cut the kovakkai if you see more reddish color inside, then it wont be good. Slicing the kovaikkai also an interesting thing. Some like to cut in thin round slices as shown below and some like to cut it in vertical pieces.

Kovakkai can be cooked in different ways with slight modifications. Some of them are

Kovakkai Curry - Kovakkai Curry is one of the quick and easy poriyal which goes very well with rice. The sliced Kovakkai are cooked with onion and basic spices.
Kovakkai Fry - Kovakkai Fry is a delicious stir-fry made with Ivy Gourd also called “Tindora or Dondakaya”. Ivy Gourd (Kovakkai) looks like a baby cucumber
Kovakkai Masala : Kovakkai masala is a very delicious and easy to make gravy with onion and tomato as base gravy. Goes well with Roti or any Indian breads

Table of Contents

Tips for making Kovakkai Thoran:

Wash the kovakkai thoroughly before slicing or chopping. We can slice the kovakkai vertically or we can chop it like small circular pieces.
Pressure cook the Kovakkai over just 2 whistles. We don't want the vegetable to be over cooked.
You can also add onions to this dish and lots more green chillies (instead of Red chili). This recipe is without the onions and you can server it either ways.
Cooked tindora tends to shrink so add salt accordingly.

Recipe Card to make Kovakkai Thoran

Method with Step by step pictures :

Wash and finely chop kovakkai into thin slices. We can chop them as a thin rounds or also vertically slice them. Pressure cook the vegetable with turmeric powder allowing for 2 whistles. We can even cook the kovakkai in stove top, which consumes more time and fuel. So I always prefer to cook kovakkai in pressure cooker. That makes the process much quicker.

Grind the grated coconut, red chilli, cumin seeds in a mixer without adding water. The ground spice mixture should be dry.

Heat the oil in the pan, and add mustard seeds. When the mustard seeds start to sputter, add the urad dhal and fry till it becomes golden brown color, then add broken curry leaves. Now add the cooked kovakkai along with salt. If there is any water in the cooked kovakkai, keep the flame in medium and let all the water gets evaporated.

Next, add ground spice mixture to the pan and give a good toss so that kovakkai is nicely mixed with the spice mixture. Cook this thuvaram for couple of minutes and switch off the flame