Punjabi Cuisine

Punjab is a state most famous for its food, music and Punjabi large heartedness. Punjabi cuisine is wholesome and fragrant. Made with dollops of ghee, cream, butter, flavoured with rich spices and deep flavours. Indian barbeque or Tandoori is probably one of the oldest forms of outdoor cooking and also called ‘Bhatti’, which is now a staple in Punjab. The Bhatti tribe of the Thar Desert developed the bhatti in their desert abode, making it popular across Pakistan and Punjab. It is here that you will find crispy oven cooked cauliflower also known as Tandoori Gobhi. Being an agricultural state, vegetable preparations are very popular too with special seasonal vegetables dishes like ‘Gobhi Aloo’ (cauliflower and potato) in winters and ‘Bharwan Bhindi’ in summers. The real taste of Punjab comes in the form of rich dals, thick curries and coal charred Tandoori delights, thick, stuffed Parantha’s served with rich, homemade butter and a tall frosty glass of luscious Lassi. These hot off the Tava, Parantha’s are stuffed with fresh vegetables like cauliflower, potatoes and even white radish or ‘mooli’. Given the love for dairy, the best Parantha is the paneer stuffed variant served with butter! ‘Lassi’ is the staple drink of Punjab where you can enjoy the standard salted one or go in for a sweet version, now you can even try fruity ones like Mango and Strawberry Lassi, a big favourite with the younger generation. Punjabi’s love their greens like spinach, fenugreek and mustard, which are eaten in the form of ‘saag’.

Distinct Features
Punjab with its rich cultivating lands has traditionally been an agrarian society since the time of the ancient Harappan Civilization. The land in the Indian Punjab is ideal for growing wheat and is called the ‘Granary of India’ or ‘India's bread-basket’. The two major crops cultivated by the farmers of Punjab are rice and wheat, which remain the principal crops grown during the Kharif season and the Rabi season respectively. The indigenous Punjab Basmati rice has been the pride of the region being grown since time immemorial. The practice of multi-cropping is quite common in Punjab which also grows sugarcane, bajra (pearl millet), jowar (great millet), barley, potatoes, vegetables and fruits among others. Cattle primarily used for agriculture and dairy farming in the region form the major source of dairy products starting from ghee, butter, clarified butter, curd, paneer (cottage cheese) to a wide variety of sweet dishes. Thus the staple foods grown locally including the dairy products form an integral part of the local diet.

Traditionally, ghee, butter, clarified butter, paneer and sunflower oil are used to cook various Punjabi dishes. However, nowadays ghee, cream and butter are liberally used in restaurants to prepare Punjabi dishes while the more health conscious households have mostly switched to sunflower oil or other refined oils. Traditional Indian spices grounded in Ghotna, a conventional kitchen device to grind and crush spices and other ingredients, are generally used in preparing the dishes. Kasoori methi or dried fenugreek leaves, onion, garlic and ginger are used extensively to prepare various Punjabi delicacies. Various food additives like vinegar, bulking agents like starch, colouring agents like zarda and condiments like cumin, coriander, dried methi leaves and black pepper are used to enhance the taste and flavour of various dishes. Fermented foods like pickles are also used to prepare many Punjabi cuisines. One of the famous ones is Achari Gosht made of chicken and pickles. Again pickles, particularly the ones made of mango popularly compliment many Punjabi dishes like the stuffed parathas, especially in the rural areas of Punjab region.

Different Cooking Styles
Various traditional cooking styles are applied with the villagers still using some of the conventional cooking infrastructures like the Punjabi bhathi which is similar to a masonry oven. The Punjabi bhathi is constructed with bricks or mud and clay and covered with a metal at the top. One side of the oven has an opening where wood, grass and bamboo leaves are put to burn the fire. The smoke of such fire emits through a cylinder. The traditional stoves and ovens in Punjab are called Chulla and Bharolli respectively and it is common to find ovens called band chulla and wadda chulla in Punjabi households. Another method of cooking using a traditional heating appliance in the form of a wood-burning stove that comprise of a closed solid metal fire chamber, an adjustable air control and a fire base made of brick is gradually dying out. A variant of such cooking style that has become quite popular is the tandoori style that includes preparing various dishes in a clay oven called tandoor.

Tandoor
The Punjabi tandoor which has become an integral part of preparing various Punjabi food items is a traditional clay oven that is commonly found in the courtyards of Punjabi households. There is also a tradition of having community tandoors in the rural pockets of Punjab. These tandoors are referred as Kath tandoors. A Punjabi tandoor is a bell-shaped oven either rested above the ground or set into the earth. Wood and charcoal are used to burn the fire of the oven. This cooking style gained mainstream popularity post Partition of India in 1947 that saw resettlement of Punjabis in places like Delhi. Varied forms of bread items like roti and naan as well as luscious meat dishes like tandoori chicken made out of roasting the chicken with other ingredients like spices and yogurt are prepared in the tandoor.