Celebrating Street Food in India

 

For the foodies who love to savour a wide variety of street foods, India is one of the best destinations.

Indian street foods are cheap yet tasty. Traversing through north to south in India you would find that each state has a unique dish which is relished by all food lovers.
Street foods are usually served in open market areas or in open trucks and vans. Most of such joints are always packed with people of all backgrounds from busy office-goers to young school children.

Starting from the capital city of India, Delhi serves the best chole bhature. Chole is made by cooking chickpeas with spices and it produces a spicy gravy which goes well with bhature(fried bread made with maida flour). It is basically a Punjabi dish and it is served along with onions, pickles and lemon wedges. It is a favourite among connoisuers of street food.

For those with a sweet tooth, Jalebis are a delight. They are made by deep-frying maida batter (or wheat flour batter) in circular shapes and then soaking them in sugar syrups. They are served either warm or cold. Hot Jalebis are made on the road-side shops with unending customers waiting for the delicacy.

Kachori, another favourite spicy snack of street-food addicts is a popular snack one would find on the streets of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Gujarat, etc. It’s main ingredients are gram flour and moong dal (Green gram). Kachori is believed to have originated in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan but one can find its variants in other states as well.

Pav Bhaji is an inevitable street food for Maharashtriyans. It is served as breakfast, lunch, dinner or even as snacks. Pav is the soft bread roll and bhaji is the vegetable curry made mainly with boiled and mashed potatoes that goes into the pav slices. It was originally served as a fast lunch-time dish for textile mill workers in Mumbai, capital city of Maharashtra. But later on it became one of the most sought-after street foods all over India.

For those who need a break from the all-spicy-snacks you can go for the most famous chaats. There are many variants of chaats, like aloo chaat, pani puri, aloo tikki, dahi puri, bhel puri and each snack is finger-licking good. The base ingredients of chaats are the fried puris and the boiled potatoes. Each chaat item has a perfect blend of different flavours that entices one’s taste-buds. Samosa is too another favourite snack which is served along with chutneys or sauces.

Down south in the country, there is again a different set of street foods. The hyderabad mirchi bajji, a snack made with a special kind of chilli coated with gram flour and deep fried, it is the one snack for all those who love the hot and spicy varieties of snack items.

In Bangalore and Chennai, one would easily find people crowded around dosa stalls in most of the main junctions. The wide variety of dosa is always the favourite of south-India but it is now popular in the North as well. Dosa is made with fermented rice flour batter and goes well with sambhar (curry made with lentils and vegetables) and chutneys. It can be eaten plain or with a thousand different stuffings according to the wish of the customers. The aroma of the ghee-roasted dosa attracts foodies to have a palatable dish. Hot and soft idlis made with the dosa flour is also one among the favourites. The blank taste and the soft texture of the idlis makes it a good combination with spicy chutneys as well as sambhars.

When anyone enters Kerala they would find many hand-carts called ‘thattu-kadakal’ selling hot omelettes, vellayappams and porottas till nights. Even though porottas are not considered a healthy food they are the all-time favorites of food lovers in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. It’s delicious taste when eaten with any spicy fish or chicken curry is mouth-watering.

If you need a twist in taste you can go for the various Chinese cuisines with an Indian touch to it. For instance, noodles sautéed with Indian masalas is also in great demand among street foodies.

With all these varieties of street food, India is one such country that is not to be missed by the foodies who love to explore and experiment with enticing cuisines.