The atlas · A cuisine · Gujarat — western India, on the Arabian Sea

Gujarati

Also Kathiawadi, Surti, Kutchi
One of Indian cooking's regional kitchens · all 7 side by side

Sweet, sour and gently hot: a largely vegetarian kitchen of gram flour, jaggery and buttermilk, of steamed and fried snacks, and a thali with a little of everything.

Where it comes from

Gujarat has been a trading coast for thousands of years, and much of it is vegetarian — shaped by Jain and Vaishnav Hindu traditions, some of which also avoid onion, garlic or anything grown underground. What the kitchen does without meat it makes up for in gram flour, lentils, vegetables and dairy, steamed, fried and tempered into an astonishing number of snacks, called farsan.

The Gujarati taste is for balance: a little jaggery or sugar in the dal and vegetables, lemon, tamarind or kokum to sharpen them, and chilli and ginger for heat. It varies across the state — drier and hotter, with garlic and millet bread, in Kathiawar and Kutch; sweeter in the cities; richest and most inventive, by its own account, in Surat.

Its ports brought in many communities. Parsis are said to have landed on this coast from Iran over a thousand years ago; Bohra and Khoja Muslim families built their own meat and rice traditions here; and Gujarati merchants carried their cooking to Bombay, East Africa and Britain.

Where in it

  1. AhmedabadGujarat's great city, known for its farsan shops, the Gujarati thali with dal, kadhi, shaak, rotli and rice, and a night market of snacks in the old city.DhoklaKhandviGujarati kadhiDal dhokli
  2. SuratA port city with a famous appetite — the saying runs that one should eat in Surat. Undhiyu is its pride in winter, with locho and ghari for the greedy.UndhiyuHandvo
  3. Kathiawar (Saurashtra)The peninsula around Rajkot, with a hotter, garlicky, rustic kitchen: millet rotla with butter, sev tameta, smoky aubergine and glasses of chaas.Sev tameta nu shaakThepla
  4. KutchThe salt desert and grasslands of the far west, with a kitchen of millet, milk and pulses. The port of Mandvi is usually credited with dabeli.Dabeli

How it cooks

Vaghar
Gujarat's tempering: mustard seed, cumin, asafoetida, curry leaves and sometimes clove and cinnamon, sizzled in oil or ghee and poured over at the end.
Steaming
Batters of gram flour, rice or lentils steamed into dhokla, handvo, muthia and khandvi — snacks that are light, spongy and then tempered.
Khatta-meetha
Sour and sweet together: jaggery with lemon, tamarind or kokum, so dal, kadhi and vegetables all carry a little of each.
Farsan
The art of the snack: gram flour and lentils fried, steamed or rolled into dozens of shapes, eaten with tea or served as part of a thali.
Matla cooking
In Surat, undhiyu was traditionally sealed in a clay pot and buried upside-down in a fire pit to cook in the earth.

Always in the kitchen

gram flour (besan)jaggerytoor dalgroundnut oilpeanutsesame seedasafoetidamustard seedcurry leafajwainfenugreek leaf (methi)green chilligingeryoghurt and buttermilk (chaas)lemonpearl millet (bajra)

Cook from it

Tonight, with what's good in October

Its classics

GujaratiDhoklaA spongy, steamed savoury cake of gram flour or fermented rice and lentils, tempered with mustard seed, curry leaves and green chilli and soaked in a sweetened water.No one here has made it yetGujaratiUndhiyuA winter medley of flat beans, purple yam, sweet potato, baby aubergine and plantain, slow-cooked with fenugreek dumplings and a green masala of coconut and coriander.No one here has made it yetGujaratiTheplaThin, soft flatbreads of wholewheat flour kneaded with fresh fenugreek, yoghurt and spice, cooked on a griddle with a little oil.No one here has made it yetGujaratiKhandviGram flour cooked with yoghurt into a thick batter, spread paper-thin, rolled into soft spirals and tempered with mustard seed, sesame and coconut.No one here has made it yetGujaratiDal dhokliPieces of spiced wholewheat dough simmered in a sweet-sour toor dal with peanuts, jaggery and lemon — a whole meal in one pot.No one here has made it yetGujaratiGujarati kadhiYoghurt thickened with a little gram flour, simmered thin with ginger and chilli, sweetened slightly and tempered with ghee, cumin, clove and curry leaves.No one here has made it yetGujaratiHandvoA savoury cake of fermented rice and lentil batter with grated bottle gourd, baked or pan-cooked until crusty and topped with a mustard and sesame tempering.No one here has made it yetGujaratiDabeliA soft bread roll split and stuffed with a sweet, hot potato filling, tamarind-date chutney, masala peanuts, pomegranate and sev, then toasted in butter.No one here has made it yetGujaratiSev tameta nu shaakTomatoes cooked down with garlic, chilli and a little jaggery into a sweet-sour gravy, with crisp gram-flour sev scattered over just before eating.No one here has made it yet

Cooked here

No one here has cooked Gujarati yet.