A kitchen shaped by drought
So Rajasthani food is two things at once: the frugal, brilliant food of the village hearth, and the lavish food of a palace that could afford saffron and silver leaf. On a good journey you eat both, sometimes on the same day.
Scarcity turned into skill: a Rajasthani cupboard holds dried berries and beans from desert trees, gram flour in a dozen forms, sun-dried lentil nuggets called mangodi, papads, pickles, ghee and spices.
- Shaped by
- Drought and scarce water
- Cooking fats
- Milk, buttermilk and ghee
- Pantry staples
- Gram flour, mangodi, papads, pickles
- Four kitchens
- Village, court, merchant, temple
- Texture
- Rich, slow-cooked, almost dry
- A curry from almost nothing: fresh green vegetables were scarce for most of the year in the west, so cooks made gram-flour dumplings in yoghurt, roasted papad in a spiced gravy, or wild beans dried in the sun after the last good monsoon.
- Milk instead of water: families cooked with milk, buttermilk and ghee where others might use water, because those came from the cattle and camels that survived the dry months.
- Food that keeps: that is why so many dishes are rich, slow-cooked and almost dry. They kept for days, travelled on camel caravans and fed men working in the fields.
- A herder's day: a meal of millet bread, garlic chutney and buttermilk could carry a herder through a long day in the dunes.
- The Rajput courts: they brought the hunt to the table, with game cooked over wood fires in red chilli and smoke, and kept khansamas, household cooks whose recipes passed from father to son.
- The Marwari merchants: many of them Jain or strictly vegetarian Vaishnav, they refined vegetarian cooking into an art and carried it across India when they settled in Kolkata and Mumbai.
- The temples: from Nathdwara to Pushkar, they cooked offerings for the gods that became the sweets of the bazaar.
The kitchens of each region
- Larger than many countries: Rajasthan's regions eat differently. These are the main kitchens we take guests through, with links to our city food guides, which go much deeper.
Jaipur and Dhundhar, the court city
The polish of a capital: the walled city is famous for its breakfasts of pyaaz kachori and thick lassi, and for sweet shops that have stood in the same bazaar for generations.
- The royal side: laal maas and the creamy, pale safed maas.
- The halwais: Jaipur's professional sweet-makers are at their best in the festival seasons, with ghevar in the monsoon and feeni and til sweets for the kite festival in January.
Jodhpur and Marwar, the bold kitchen
Fierce food: Jodhpur's own snack is the mirchi bada, a fat green chilli stuffed with spiced potato, dipped in gram-flour batter and fried.
- Sweet shops: known for makhaniya lassi, rich with butter and saffron, and the mawa kachori, a pastry filled with sweetened milk solids and dipped in syrup.
- In the villages: millet, ker sangri and white butter, cooked over cow-dung fires.
Bikaner, the snack capital
India's favourite savoury: Bikaner gave the country bhujia, crisp fried threads of moth-bean and gram flour, spiced with black pepper.
- Made by hand: whole lanes of the old city still make it, and the smell of hot oil drifts over the bazaar from early morning.
- Also known for: rasgullas, papads, winter sweets, and a merchant culture that kept a very fine vegetarian table.
Jaisalmer and the Thar
The purest desert cooking: ker sangri and panchkuta, a dish of five desert ingredients, are everyday food here rather than a restaurant speciality.
- Bread of the dunes: bajra roti with garlic chutney and buttermilk, and in winter with jaggery and ghee.
- The local sweet: the ghotua laddoo.
- Rooftop pantries: in the fort's lanes, families still dry their own papads and pickles on the rooftops.
Udaipur and Mewar, the gentler table
Softer food: Mewar is greener and wetter than the desert. Maize grows on the hills, so winter brings makki ki roti with greens.
- Royal kitchens: known for game recipes and for maas ke soole, skewered meat cooked over charcoal.
- Thali houses: near the old city they serve unlimited refills of dal, curries and breads. We love an honest thali lunch after a morning in the City Palace.
Pushkar, the holy town
A pilgrim town: meat, fish, eggs and alcohol are not permitted within it, which makes it one of the best places in Rajasthan for vegetarian food.
- Breakfast: malpua, sweet fried pancakes soaked in syrup and served with rabri, thickened milk.
- Rose preserve: the town makes gulkand from rose petals grown in the fields around the lake.
Shekhawati, Hadoti and the south
Shekhawati: in the painted towns of Shekhawati the merchant havelis kept a careful vegetarian table, and the heritage hotels serve simple, excellent home cooking.
- Hadoti: around Bundi and Kota, the food is closer to central India, with more fresh vegetables and wheat.
- The tribal south: in Dungarpur and Banswara, maize and forest greens take over from wheat and millet.
Agra and Delhi, the Mughal neighbours
A different table: most journeys begin in Delhi and pass through Agra, and both eat very differently from Rajasthan.
- The Mughal table: kebabs, kormas, biryani and breads from the tandoor.
- Agra's specialities: petha, the translucent candied gourd, and bedai and jalebi at breakfast.
- Read more: our guides to the food of Delhi and the food of Agra cover them properly.
Ten dishes worth knowing by name
Dal baati churma
Everyone's dish: every Rajasthani family claims it as its own.
- Baati: hard rolls of wheat dough, baked in embers or an oven until the crust cracks, then broken open and soaked in ghee.
- With it: dal, usually a mix of lentils, and churma, baati crushed with ghee and sugar or jaggery into a sweet crumble.
- Field and battle food: baati keep for days. Eat it at lunch, never before a long drive.
Ker sangri
Two desert plants: ker is a small sour berry from a desert shrub, and sangri are the long beans of the khejri tree, the tree the Bishnoi people protect with their lives.
- Picked and dried: both are gathered in the short season, dried in the sun and stored for the year.
- The taste: cooked with red chilli, dried mango powder and oil, they make a sharp, chewy, deeply savoury dish that tastes of the Thar itself.
Gatte ki sabzi
Vegetables from flour: when there were no vegetables, cooks made them from gram flour.
- Gatte: dumplings of spiced besan, boiled, sliced and simmered in a yoghurt gravy.
- A busy-day dish: our mothers made it on busy days, and it is far better than it sounds.
Laal maas
The red meat of the Rajputs: mutton cooked slowly with yoghurt, garlic and a great many dried red chillies.
- The chilli: traditionally the Mathania chilli from a village near Jodhpur, which gives colour as much as fire.
- Origins: it began as a way to cook game.
- Heat: ask your host to tone it down if you like, but try it as it should be made at least once.
Safed maas
- The palace answer to laal maas: mutton cooked in milk, cream, ground cashew or almond and whole spices until the sauce is pale and silky.
- Who it suits: gentle and fragrant, a good choice for anyone who loves the idea of royal Rajasthani food but not its chilli.
Bajre ki roti with garlic chutney
Bread of the desert: pearl millet grows where wheat will not. Its flatbread is thick and nutty.
- How to eat it: hot, with ghee, lahsun ki chutney, a fiery paste of garlic and red chilli, and a glass of buttermilk.
- In winter: with jaggery and white butter, one of the simplest pleasures in Rajasthan.
Kadhi and pakodi
The dish: a tangy curry of yoghurt and gram flour, tempered with cumin and fenugreek, with soft fritters floating in it.
- Not the Gujarati version: Rajasthani kadhi is thinner and sharper.
- Comfort food: eaten with rice or millet bread.
Papad ki sabzi and mangodi
Papad ki sabzi: roasted papads broken into a spiced yoghurt gravy at the last minute.
- Mangodi: small sun-dried nuggets of lentil paste, cooked with potato or onion.
- Nothing wasted: both come from a kitchen that never wasted anything.
Panchkuta
- Five desert things: ker, sangri, kumatiya seeds, dried kachri melon and gunda berries, though families vary the five.
- A test of a cook: a festival and wedding dish in Marwar, and a good cook is judged on it.
Khichda and raab
Village winter food: khichda is pounded millet or wheat cooked slowly with lentils.
- Raab: a warm, thin porridge of millet flour and buttermilk, drunk in cold weather and believed to keep the body strong.
- Where to find them: rarely in restaurants, but a village lunch on our Village Rajasthan journey might include them.
Sweets that keep the calendar
- January
- Feeni, til patti, gajak
- November to February
- Halwas and gond laddoos
- March
- Gujiya for Holi
- April to June
- Kulfi and chilled rabri
- July and August
- Ghevar for Teej
- October or November
- Diwali sweet boxes
- The old rhythm: sweets here are tied to festivals and weather, and our families still follow it. For the festivals themselves, see our festivals of Rajasthan pages.
January: feeni and til at the kite festival
When: for Makar Sankranti on 14 January.
- Feeni: Jaipur's sweet shops pile up nests of fine, flaky threads, eaten with sweetened milk.
- Sesame and jaggery: sweets called til patti and gajak. Sesame is thought to warm the body in the coldest weeks, and every rooftop has a plate of it.
Winter: halwas, laddoos and gond
- November to February: the shops fill with moong dal halwa, gajar halwa made from red winter carrots, and laddoos of gond, an edible gum fried in ghee with nuts.
- Warming sweets: mothers give them to new mothers and to anyone who looks a little tired.
March: gujiya at Holi
- For Holi: families fry gujiya, half-moon pastries filled with mawa, coconut and nuts.
- Hospitality: you'll be offered them in every house you visit during the festival.
Summer: kulfi, rabri and cool things
April to June: the sweets turn cold.
- Kulfi: dense frozen milk set in cones or clay pots, sold in the evenings.
- Rabri: milk boiled down for hours into soft layers, eaten chilled. Pushkar pairs it with hot malpua all year, and nobody complains.
The monsoon: ghevar for Teej
The sweet we wait for: batter is poured in a thin stream into hot ghee and forms a lacy honeycomb disc, soaked in syrup and often topped with cream and nuts.
- When: the humid weeks around Teej, in July and August. The halwais say it cannot be made well in dry weather.
- A family custom: married daughters receive it from their parents, and Jaipur's old sweet shops have queues out of the door.
Autumn: Diwali boxes
- Before Diwali: in October or November, every family buys and gives boxes of kaju katli, barfi, laddoos and milk cakes.
- In the bazaars: sweet shops open late, and the lanes smell of cardamom and frying.
All year: the city specialities
Sweets of place: some belong to places rather than seasons.
- Jodhpur: mawa kachori. Bikaner: rasgullas. Jaisalmer: ghotua laddoo. Pushkar: malpua. Alwar: milk cake.
- Ajmer: sohan halwa, a dense, chewy sweet rich with ghee and nuts, sold in the lanes near the dargah.
- Nathdwara: the temple prasad, offered to Shrinathji before it is shared with pilgrims, is a sweet in its own category.
Street food, and how to enjoy it without regret
Where Rajasthan eats breakfast: street food is the food our families argue about most.
What to try: pyaaz kachori in Jaipur and Jodhpur, mirchi bada in Jodhpur, kachori and jalebi in Bikaner, samosa with kadhi, kanji vada in fermented mustard water at Holi, and spiced potato aloo tikki in the evenings.
Hot oil protects: most of it is fried in very hot oil, which is the best protection there is.
- Best hour
- Morning, when the oil is fresh
- Choose
- Busy stalls, cooked in front of you
- Skip
- Raw salads, cut fruit, sun-warmed chutneys
- Water
- Sealed bottles or hotel-filtered
- Pace
- One dish a stall at first
- Our guides' own stalls: we take guests where our guides eat themselves, with a fast turnover, fresh batter and oil, and owners who cook in front of you.
- A food walk: a guided morning walk in the old city of Jaipur, Jodhpur or Bikaner is one of the best things on a first visit, and fits easily into a heritage walk.
- Eat in the morning: when the oil is fresh and the batter newly made, at busy stalls where food doesn't sit.
- Cooked hot in front of you: avoid anything that has been sitting at room temperature.
- Skip the raw things: raw salads, cut fruit and chutneys left out in the sun. Whole fruit you peel yourself is fine.
- Water and ice: drink sealed bottled water or the filtered water your hotel provides. Be cautious with ice and with golgappa water unless your guide vouches for it.
- Lassi and chaach: safest from busy shops with a rapid turnover, served in a fresh clay cup.
- Start gently: try one dish at a stall, not five, in your first few days, and keep the second round for later in the trip.
- Clean hands: carry hand sanitiser and use it. Indians eat with the right hand, and so will you.
- Sensitive stomach: talk to your own doctor before you travel. Our health and safety guide has general advice.
Royal kitchens and community kitchens
The royal kitchens
Households in themselves: each court had its own recipes for game birds, wild boar and venison.
How they cooked: often in a pit, under a heap of embers or in a sealed pot, and served at the end of a hunt.
- Today: hunting is banned, so those recipes are made with mutton or chicken.
- The old cooks: several royal families still keep them, and some of their dishes reach the tables of the heritage hotels they run.
- The family's dining room: at family forts such as Rohet Garh or the old palaces of Bikaner, a meal can feel like a visit to the family's own dining room, because it often is.
The Marwari merchant kitchen
- Precise and vegetarian: mostly vegetarian, often without onion and garlic, and very precise.
- It travelled: its sweets and snacks went with the merchant families to every city in India, which is why a Bikaner snack shop in Kolkata or Chennai tastes so like home.
Kitchens that feed thousands
Ajmer's cauldrons: at the Ajmer Sharif dargah, two huge iron cauldrons called degs are filled with sweet rice, nuts and ghee and shared among pilgrims as a blessing.
- Langar: the Sikh gurudwaras serve a free communal meal to anyone who sits on the floor with them, whatever their faith.
- Wedding cooks: Rajasthani weddings feed whole villages, with cooks who arrive days ahead and stir dal in pans big enough to bathe in.
Vegetarian, Jain, vegan and other diets
- Green dot
- Vegetarian food
- Red or brown
- Non-vegetarian food
- Jain food
- No meat, eggs or root vegetables
- Gluten-free breads
- Millet, maize, sorghum
- Hidden nuts
- Cashew and almond in gravies
Vegetarian
Easy here: a large share of Rajasthanis are vegetarian, and many restaurants serve no meat at all.
- The dots: menus mark vegetarian food with a green dot and non-vegetarian food with a red or brown one, a national labelling convention worth knowing.
- No struggle: you will never struggle to eat well here without meat.
Jain food
The rules: no meat, fish or eggs. Strict followers also avoid root vegetables such as onion, garlic, potato and carrot, because pulling them from the earth harms small creatures.
- After sunset: many Jains don't eat after dark.
- Well understood: Rajasthan has a long Jain merchant history, with great temples at Ranakpur and Dilwara, so hotels and cooks know Jain food well.
- Tell us in advance: we brief every kitchen.
Vegan
Harder than vegetarian: ghee, butter, yoghurt, cream and milk run through almost everything.
- Entirely possible: dal, many vegetable dishes, millet breads and ker sangri can be cooked in oil, and palace hotel chefs are used to the request.
- Our notes: we pass detailed notes to each hotel before you arrive.
Gluten-free
A natural advantage: millet, maize and sorghum breads are gluten-free, and much of the cooking uses gram flour rather than wheat.
- Watch for: wheat baati, puris and kachori are everywhere, and asafoetida powder is often mixed with wheat flour.
- Coeliacs: carry a translated card and let us brief the kitchens.
Allergies
Hidden nuts: cashews, almonds and other nuts are ground into many rich gravies and sweets, and are not always visible.
- In snacks: peanuts and sesame.
- Serious allergy: tell us early and carry your own medication. We confirm your needs in writing with each hotel.
What Rajasthan drinks
Roadside chai: boiled with milk, sugar and often ginger or cardamom, served in small glasses or clay cups called kulhads that are thrown away after use.
Safe and welcome: chai is safe because it is boiled, and it is the best way to break a long drive.
Coffee: easy to find in cities and hotels, less so in villages.
- Chai
- Boiled, so safe
- Kulhad
- Throwaway clay cup
- Chaach
- Thin spiced buttermilk
- Kesar doodh
- Hot saffron milk at night
- Alcohol
- Legal, but not in Pushkar
- Chaach: thin spiced buttermilk with cumin and salt, the summer drink of the desert. It settles a stomach after a rich meal.
- Lassi: thicker, sweet or salted. In Jaipur the most famous is served at Lassiwala on MI Road, which sells out by lunchtime. Jodhpur's makhaniya lassi is richer still.
- At night: try kesar doodh, hot milk with saffron and nuts, sold in the old bazaars of Jodhpur and Jaipur.
- Alcohol: legal in Rajasthan, and palace hotels have good bars and wine lists.
- Where it isn't served: not in Pushkar or many temple towns. Some states and areas have different rules, and bars close on national and state dry days.
- The rules explained: our guide to dry days and alcohol. Drink discreetly in public, and never near a temple.
Dining well, the way we arrange it
The palace hotels
Some of the finest Rajasthani food in the country: dining at the Suvarna Mahal at Rambagh Palace in Jaipur, under its gilded ceilings, is an occasion in itself.
- Inside Amber Fort: the restaurant 1135 AD serves a royal menu in painted rooms.
- Udaipur and Jodhpur: the great hotels have terraces looking over the lake or up at the fort, and the meal is as much about the view as the food.
- Settings described: our pages on luxury hotels in Udaipur and elsewhere.
The meals we set up privately
On a bastion: a dinner on a fort bastion after the gates close, with lamps and a singer.
In a haveli: a thali lunch in the courtyard of a haveli whose family has lived there for two hundred years.
- On a rooftop: a breakfast of kachori and chai opposite Hawa Mahal.
- On the dunes: a desert dinner at a luxury camp, with bajra roti cooked over the fire in front of you.
- What can be arranged: our private palace dinners and rooftop dining pages.
Restaurants we name
- Only the established: cafes open and close quickly in the tourist lanes, so we name restaurants only where we are sure they are well established.
Learning to cook it yourself
Family kitchens: we arrange cooking lessons in family kitchens in Jaipur, Udaipur, Jodhpur and the villages, with home cooks rather than chefs.
The market first: you start with a visit to the spice market or the vegetable sellers.
- Where
- Jaipur, Udaipur, Jodhpur, villages
- Teacher
- Home cooks, not chefs
- Starts with
- Spice market or vegetable sellers
- Cook
- Three or four dishes
- Spices to take
- Mathania chilli, ker sangri, kasuri methi
- At the stove: three or four dishes, perhaps dal, gatte, a millet roti and a simple sweet. Then you eat together.
- How a morning works: our haveli cooking class page explains it.
- Spices that travel well: Mathania chillies, dried ker sangri, kasuri methi (dried fenugreek leaves) and a good garam masala from a trusted spice shop.
Table manners, the Rajasthani way
Wash before and after: many homes bring a jug and basin to the table.
Right hand only: tear bread with the fingers of the right hand alone, and use it to scoop the curry. The left hand is kept off the food.
- Eat with
- Right hand only
- To stop
- Cover plate, say bas
- Shoes
- Off in kitchens and homes
- Prasad
- Both hands or the right
- Any order: in a thali, eat the dishes in any order you like. A sweet may come first or in the middle, and nobody minds.
- How to stop: your host will keep refilling your plate. Leave a little food, cover the plate with your hand and say bas, enough, with a smile.
- No waste: take only what you will eat. Wasting food is considered disrespectful, especially in temples and homes.
- Your own plate: don't share food from it once you've started, and don't offer food you have bitten into.
- Prasad and langar: in temples and gurudwaras, accept them with both hands or the right hand, and eat rather than throw away.
- At the door: shoes off when entering a kitchen or a home. Look at what your host does, and follow.
Building food into your journey
The classics: a first journey naturally collects them, city by city.
If food is your reason: our food trail journey is built around kitchens, markets and family tables.
- Jaipur
- Kachori, lassi, royal dinners
- Jodhpur
- Mirchi bada, makhaniya lassi
- Jaisalmer
- Desert cooking
- Udaipur
- Thalis and lakeside terraces
- Pushkar
- Malpua and vegetarian food
- Everything we arrange: listed on our food experiences page.
- Time it to the sweets: July or August for ghevar and the Teej festivals, January for feeni and the kite festival, October or November for the Diwali sweet boxes.
- One unplanned stop a day: the chai stall by the highway, the village where women are rolling papads in the sun, the sweet shop with the long queue.