Learn About… INDIAN Food! :)

Ahhh Indian food!!! I feel so qualified to talk about this! I love love love Naan and aloo paratha. So yummy! Naan is really soft and aloo paratha has potatoes stuffed in it. I sort or like eating aloo paratha with an aloo dish. Ooo and mango Lassi. We can't forget about mango lassi.

I want recipes for basically everything in this thread, haha 😊 

I love Indian food and have a fantastic restaurant nearby, thankfully. It is my goal to someday talk the owner into teaching me a couple of the recipes. I don't know how I will accomplish this, but it won't stop me from trying 😂

Dinner tonight will be Lamb Korma and Peshawari Naan. Yummy. 

All my people here who are LOVING this post:

Would you like to be added to my taglist??? <3

Poha is flattened rice, but the word is also shorthand for many of the dishes it creates. There are thin, medium, and thick flakes, producing a range of textures best suited for instant snacks, quick meals, or more time-consuming creations. They all cook more quickly than whole grain rice though, while retaining more vitamins and minerals than standard white rice.

Like Vietnamese broken rice, this unique format isn’t a defect but intentional feature. Modern factories use heavy rollers to flatten the grains just like rolled oats. Traditionally, and still to this day in some small villages, the rice is pounded by hand, earning the alternate description of “beaten rice.”

Chivda is a term that can be used interchangeably depending on the region, although it often refers to a thinner variety, dry-roasted with spices and enjoyed as a crispy snack.

https://bittersweetblog.com/2023/08/11/flattened-rice-poha/

I'm Indian too North Indian near 20s I have travelled south for somewhile so I know much

North India

Jammu & Kashmir – Dum Aloo

Potatoes cooked in spicy yogurt gravy → Spiced potato curry

Rogan Josh - meat based item

Himachal Pradesh (my state) – Siddu

Wheat flour dough, sometimes stuffed, steamed → Steamed bread dumpling

Punjab – Sarson da Saag

Mustard leaves cooked with spices → Mustard greens curry

Uttar Pradesh – Aloo Puri

Fried wheat bread + potato curry → Fried bread with potato curry

Uttarakhand – Kafuli

Spinach leaves with rice flour → Thick spinach curry

West India

Rajasthan – Dal Baati Churma

Lentils + baked wheat balls + sweet wheat crumble → Lentils with baked bread

Gujarat – Dhokla

Fermented gram flour, steamed → Steamed savory cake

Maharashtra – Puran Poli

Wheat flatbread stuffed with sweet lentils → Sweet stuffed flatbread

Central India

Madhya Pradesh – Poha

Flattened rice cooked with peanuts → Light rice flakes dish

East India

Bihar – Litti Chokha

Wheat balls stuffed with gram flour + mashed vegetables → Stuffed wheat balls with veggie mash

West Bengal – Aloo Posto

Potatoes cooked with poppy seeds → Potato poppy-seed curry

Odisha – Dalma

Lentils with mixed vegetables → Vegetable lentil stew

South India

Tamil Nadu – Idli

Steamed rice and lentil batter → Steamed rice cakes

Tamil Nadu – Dosa

Crispy fermented rice-lentil pancake → Thin savory pancake

Kerala – Avial

Mixed vegetables with coconut → Coconut vegetable stew

Karnataka – Bisi Bele Bath

Rice, lentils, vegetables together → Spiced rice and lentil dish

North-East India

Sikkim – Veg Momos

Steamed dough with vegetable filling → Steamed vegetable dumplings

Assam – Khar (veg)

Vegetables cooked with alkaline banana peel extract → Traditional alkaline vegetable curry

One-liner :

“Indian food is mostly rice, wheat, lentils, vegetables, and spices—like steamed breads, curries, pancakes, and dumplings.”

Non veg items I don't have much knowledge cuz I am vegetarian

But some say

Butter chicken and things they are famous I had heard about Rogan Josh so I mentioned

It's hard to sum up it's so diverse I mentioned one from famous places not all

Yeah one important thing- What you eat at home or traditional is something else then restaurants many times so it's best you try that item from that state’s restaurant or locals home if they invite you

Example

South Indian restaurants which offer let's say idli dosa sambar are majestic and North Indian south style based restaurants are nothing when compared to south Indian restaurants offering same dish it's just different levels of those items in South !

Pizza made in Italy is way better than pizza made in America ! Culture+ Roots + Recipe+ Experience are involved

That's my point

Honourable mention 😅: Aloo paratha (Aloo is potato and it's basically mashed potatoes in wheat dough and then made like chapattis like stuffed chapattis ) it's great with ghee ( aka clarified butter )

Methi Matar Malai is fenugreek leaves and peas, cooked in a fragrant and creamy gravy. This North Indian dish is a winter special in the households and is also hugely popular in the dhabas & restaurants.

https://www.indianhealthyrecipes.com/methi-matar-malai/

@jesusredeemedme2425

Sweet kolukattai..!! 😘😋

(Vella Kozhukattai) is a traditional South Indian steamed dumpling consisting of a rice flour outer shell filled with a sweet coconut-jaggery mixture. Key ingredients include rice flour (or idiyappam flour), grated jaggery, fresh coconut, cardamom powder, ghee, and water. It is a popular, healthy, steamed sweet often prepared for festivals like Ganesh Chaturthi. 

@jesusredeemedme2425 

This malai ghewar, I ate it like once in my life though I had heard a lot about it, it so extremely tasty but kinda hard to make 

The practice of eating fire paan began with the practice of chewing paan. Paan, from the Sanskrit word parna meaning leaf, is made by wrapping betel nut (the seed that comes from the fruit of the areca palm) inside betel leaves with slaked lime and spices such as fennel, clove, cardamom, and aniseed. Other flavorings might include berries, chutney, or a type of preserve made from rose petals known as gulkand. Paan is known for having medicinal properties and is often chewed as an after-meal mouth freshener, then spit out. Similar practices of chewing betel nut are common throughout South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Asia Pacific.

Fire paan is what you get when you take traditional paan and then set it ablaze. When and where this fiery iteration originated isn’t entirely clear. Some sources have traced it back to a paan shop called Galaxy Paan in the city of Rajkot in the state of Gujarat on the west coast of India. The owner of the shop, who claims to have invented fire paan, says it took more than a month to perfect the recipe and technique. Though the exact origin story remains shrouded in some mystery, what we do know is that fire paan was popularized through social media posts around 2015 and 2016 and is now a full-on internet sensation.

https://matadornetwork.com/watch/fire-paan/#:~:text=A%20new%20trend%20is%20sweeping,betel%20leaf%20and%20set%20ablaze.

Hii ! One thing that i absolutely love from our country is poha ! It's my favourite breakfast / light food ever ...

IPoha is a simple and popular Indian dish made from flattened rice, usually eaten for breakfast. The rice is lightly washed, then cooked with onions, peanuts, mustard seeds, turmeric, and green chilies, and finished with lemon juice and coriander. It is soft, mildly spicy, slightly tangy, and easy to digest. Poha is loved because it is quick to make, healthy, and filling without being heavy, making it a common comfort food in many Indian homes.

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