Traditional recipes

Deep-fried, slightly crisp breads of soaked rice and chana dal batter, Jharkhand’s best-known breakfast, eaten with potato curry or ghugni.

A soft, thin pancake of rice and chana dal batter cooked on a griddle, a simple everyday bread of Jharkhand eaten with chutney or vegetables.

Ring-shaped fritters of ground urad dal, fried in mustard oil, made in Jharkhand for festivals, weddings and fairs.

Dried yellow or white peas cooked with onion, tomato and spices into a thick curry, the usual partner of dhuska in Jharkhand.

Tomatoes roasted over a flame and crushed with garlic, green chilli, coriander and mustard oil, a sharp, smoky chutney served with dhuska and rice.

A curry of rugra, the round wild mushrooms that grow under sal trees in the early monsoon, a much-awaited seasonal food of Jharkhand.

A spicy dry stir-fry of khukhri, a wild mushroom gathered in the monsoon, cooked in mustard oil with onion and garlic.

Tender bamboo shoots boiled and cooked with mustard oil, garlic and chilli, a traditional monsoon vegetable of Jharkhand’s tribal kitchens.

A sharp pickle of bamboo shoots in mustard oil and spices, made in the rainy season and kept for months.

The tender young leaves of the phutkal (a wild fig tree) boiled and cooked with garlic and chilli, a sour spring green eaten fresh or dried for later.

Young leaves of the koinar (kachnar, Bauhinia) tree cooked as a soft green with garlic and mustard oil, a spring food of Jharkhand.

A warming dal of horse gram, a hardy pulse grown on Jharkhand’s dry uplands, tempered with garlic and mustard oil.

A thin, nourishing soup made from the starchy water drained from cooking rice, simmered with greens and a little garlic.

A creamy pudding of gondli, the little millet grown on Jharkhand’s uplands, cooked in milk with jaggery.

Nutty, wholesome balls of roasted finger millet flour, jaggery and ghee, made in Jharkhand homes as a healthy sweet.

Sweet balls of dried mahua flowers roasted and pounded with sesame or roasted grains, a traditional forest food of Jharkhand’s tribal communities.

Free-range country chicken slow-cooked in mustard oil with onion, garlic and whole spices into a dark, rich curry.

Goat meat slow-cooked in a sealed clay or metal pot (handi) with mustard oil, onions, garlic and whole spices, a festive dish of Jharkhand.

Pork cooked slowly in its own fat with garlic, ginger, onion and chilli, a favourite festive dish of many tribal communities of Jharkhand.

Small river or pond fish mixed with mustard paste, garlic and chilli, wrapped in sal leaves and roasted in embers or on a pan.

Brown, grainy milk sweets made by slowly reducing milk with sugar, famous as the prasad of Baba Baidyanath Dham in Deoghar.

Small rice-flour dumplings, sometimes stuffed with coconut and jaggery, cooked in sweetened milk for Makar Sankranti and harvest festivals.

Steamed cakes of new-harvest rice flour sweetened with jaggery, made in Jharkhand’s villages for harvest festivals.

Soft, round fritters of wheat flour and jaggery, sometimes with banana, fried in oil, a simple sweet of Jharkhand homes and festivals.