How the desert shaped the kitchen
Water first: rain is rare and unreliable, so the region grows tough crops such as bajra, pearl millet, and moth and moong beans, and relies on the trees and shrubs that survive drought.
Then distance: for centuries the nearest market for fresh food might be days away by camel, so families dried, pickled and stored everything they could.
- Water
- Rare and unreliable rain
- Distance
- Markets once days away by camel
- Trade
- Caravans brought spices and dried fruit
- Staples
- Millet, beans, buttermilk, ghee
- Flavour
- Chilli, garlic, dried mango
- Then trade: the caravans brought spices, dried fruit and merchant families with their own traditions of cooking.
- The result: a cuisine of dried berries and beans, millet, buttermilk, ghee and spice, cooked with very little water.
- Milk matters: cattle, goats and camels can live where crops fail. Buttermilk and yoghurt go into curries, ghee onto every roti, and milk is cooked down into sweets.
- Flavour that keeps: chilli, garlic and dried mango give flavour and help food last in the heat.
- Every family's version: our relatives will argue happily about whose grandmother made the best ker sangri.
- The wider picture: our Rajasthani food guide and our page on food and royal kitchens.
The dishes to try, and their stories
Ker sangri, the taste of the Thar
Ker: a small, sharp berry from a leafless desert shrub.
Sangri: the long, thin beans of the khejri tree, the tree the desert depends on for shade, fodder and food.
- How it's made: both are picked in season and dried in the sun, then soaked and cooked with oil, red chilli, dried mango and spices.
- The taste: tangy, nutty and slightly bitter.
- The whole story: our journal piece on ker sangri.
Panchkuta, five things from the desert
The name: panchkuta means five ingredients. It is ker sangri's richer cousin.
- What goes in: ker, sangri, the seeds of the kumatiya tree and gunda berries, with dried chillies or raw mango, cooked slowly with spices and plenty of oil.
- House by house: the mix varies from family to family.
- Why it exists: families made it to last on long journeys and in the hottest months. At its best it is extraordinary.
Bajre ki roti with garlic chutney
The grain: bajra, pearl millet, grows where wheat cannot.
How it's cooked: patted out by hand, cooked on a griddle and then over the flame, and served smeared with ghee.
- The taste: thick, nutty and filling.
- The partner: lehsun ki chutney, a fiery paste of garlic and red chilli.
- In winter: often eaten with jaggery and white butter.
Kadhi, the buttermilk curry
What it is: yoghurt or buttermilk simmered with gram flour and spices into a thin, sour, golden curry.
- Pakodi: sometimes fried gram-flour dumplings float in it.
- Why it matters: it cools the body in the heat and turns a plate of millet roti into a meal.
Gatte and papad, curries without vegetables
Necessity: when there were no fresh vegetables, cooks made them.
- Gatte: dumplings of gram flour, boiled and then cooked in a spiced yoghurt gravy.
- Papad ki sabzi: crisp lentil wafers turned into a curry.
- The verdict: both are proof of the desert cook's ingenuity, and both are delicious.
Dal baati churma
The trio: dal, spiced lentils; baati, hard wheat rolls baked in embers and dunked in ghee; and churma, crushed baati sweetened with jaggery or sugar.
- Rajasthan's best known: a feast dish, heavy and wonderful.
- When: at lunch, with a rest to follow. Read our dal baati churma recipe.
Laal maas and mutton saag
A hunting tradition: Rajput households were famous for their hunting and their meat dishes.
- Laal maas: the most famous of them, mutton in a fiery red gravy of chilli, yoghurt and garlic. Our laal maas recipe explains it.
- Mutton saag: Jaisalmer is also known for mutton cooked with spinach and spices.
- Wary of chilli: ask for both mild.
Kachri, the desert melon
What it is: a small wild melon of the desert, sour and slightly bitter.
- Dried and powdered: it tenderises meat and sharpens chutneys.
- Fresh in season: cooked into a tangy chutney or curry.
- A sense of place: one of those flavours that tells you exactly where you are.
The desert larder: pickles, papads and sun-dried stores
When the stores are made: in the summer and after the harvest, women spend days making things that will last the year.
Papads: of lentil and gram flour, rolled thin and dried in the sun.
- Mangodi and badi: little dumplings of ground lentils, dried hard on cloth.
- Pickles: chilli, lime, ker and raw mango, sealed in oil and spice.
- Ker and sangri: dried when in season and stored in tins.
- Spices at home: red chillies dried and ground, and spices roasted and pounded in the house.
- A feast in a drought: papads become curry, dried lentil dumplings become a gravy, and a spoon of pickle turns plain millet roti into a meal.
- Buying to take home: buy spices and pickles from shops our guides know, sealed and freshly made, not from stalls where they have sat in the sun for weeks.
The thali, and how to eat it
The plate: a thali is a complete meal on one plate.
What comes: ker sangri or panchkuta, kadhi, a dal, gatte or a seasonal vegetable, millet and wheat rotis, rice, garlic chutney, pickle, papad, buttermilk and a sweet.
How to eat it: all together, a little of each with every mouthful of roti, rather than course by course.
- What it is
- A complete meal on one plate
- When
- Lunch, followed by rest
- To stop
- Cover the plate, say bas
- The idea
- Balance of sour, nutty, fiery, cool
- The idea is balance: sour kadhi with nutty ker sangri, fiery chutney with cooling buttermilk, sweet with salty.
- Manuhar: the Rajasthani word for the way your host keeps filling your plate, the loving insistence that a guest eat more. Protests are part of the ritual.
- To stop: cover your plate with your hand and say bas, enough, with a smile.
- Take a little at a time: leaving food on the plate is not polite here.
- When: lunch, because a thali is heavy and the afternoon is for rest.
- Where we book: our guests' hotels, family homes and a few long-established local places whose kitchens we know. Read our Rajasthani thali guide.
Sweets of the desert
- All year
- Ghotua laddoo, churma laddoo
- Weddings
- Malpua with rabri
- Winter
- Gond ke laddoo, sesame and jaggery
- Monsoon
- Ghevar, for Teej
Ghotua laddoo, Jaisalmer's own
What it is: a soft ball of gram flour cooked in ghee and pounded by hand with cardamom and saffron, rich and crumbly.
- Where locals send you: Dhanraj Bhatia's sweet shop in the old town, run by the same family for many generations.
- How to enjoy it: buy a small box and share it on your hotel terrace at tea time.
Churma laddoo and malpua
Churma laddoo: balls of crushed wheat, ghee and jaggery, made for festivals and offered at temples.
- Malpua: sweet fried pancakes soaked in syrup, served at weddings and festivals across Rajasthan.
- With rabri: malpua often comes with rabri, thickened sweet milk.
Winter sweets for warmth
Warming sweets: in the cold months families make sweets they believe warm the body.
- Gond ke laddoo: gond ke laddoo are made with edible gum, ghee and dried fruit.
- Makar Sankranti: sweets of sesame and jaggery in January.
- Ask for them: in winter, your hotel or our cooks will make some. Our Rajasthani sweets guide covers the rest of the state.
Ghevar in the Teej season
What it is: ghevar, a honeycomb disc of fried batter soaked in syrup, sometimes topped with cream.
- Its season: the monsoon and the festival of Teej.
- A Jaipur speciality: but it appears in Jaisalmer's sweet shops in July and August. Read about ghevar and Teej.
Street food, and how to eat it safely
Mirchi bada: large green chillies stuffed with spiced potato, dipped in gram-flour batter and fried, a classic snack of western Rajasthan.
Pyaaz kachori: flaky pastries filled with spiced onion, a speciality of Jodhpur. Our pyaaz kachori guide explains the version you will meet on the way.
Samosas and kachoris: everywhere.
- Choose
- Busy stalls, cooked fresh and hot
- Avoid
- Raw salads, cut fruit left out
- Water
- Sealed or filtered only
- When
- Morning or late afternoon
- Chai: endless glasses, sweet and milky, boiled with ginger and cardamom.
- Lassi: sweet or salty, sold everywhere.
- Cooked in front of you: eat food that is cooked fresh and served hot.
- Busy stalls: food moves quickly there.
- What to avoid: raw salads, cut fruit that has been sitting out and chutneys you are unsure of.
- Water and ice: drink only sealed or filtered water, and be cautious with ice.
- Timing: eat street food in the morning or late afternoon, when it is freshest, and take it easy in the first days of your trip.
- With our guides: they know the stalls the town trusts. Our page on health and safety has more advice.
Royal kitchens and community kitchens
The Rajput kitchen
Warriors and hunters: the Bhati Rajputs and their nobles ate as both.
- Over fire: meat dishes cooked slowly, rich with chilli, ghee and yoghurt, and game cooked in the field.
- Khad: a desert technique, meat wrapped and buried in a pit of hot coals in the sand.
- Today: some hotels and camps recreate these dishes, and we can arrange a royal-style dinner. Read about a private dinner in a palace.
The Jain merchant kitchen
Who: Jaisalmer's merchant families were largely Jain, and Jain cooking follows strict rules born of non-violence.
What strict Jains avoid: meat, fish and eggs, and also onions, garlic, potatoes and other root vegetables.
- Why roots: pulling them up kills the whole plant and the small creatures in the soil.
- Before sunset: many eat before the sun goes down.
- Its legacy: subtle, careful and very good cooking that shaped much of the town's vegetarian food.
The village kitchen
Simpler still: millet roti, buttermilk, a dal or a dish of dried beans, onion and chilli, and raabdi in winter.
- Built for hard work: food for hard conditions.
- The meal guests remember: a meal in a village home, arranged with care and with the family properly paid. Read about our rural homestays.
Vegetarian and Jain food
Already vegetarian: ker sangri, panchkuta, kadhi, gatte, dal baati churma, millet roti and nearly every sweet.
The most local meal: vegetarians eat it.
- Vegetarian
- Most local dishes and nearly every sweet
- Jain
- Ask for Jain khana
- Vegan
- Ask about ghee, butter, yoghurt, milk
- Allergies
- Nuts, gram flour and dairy are common
- Meat-free kitchens: many restaurants and sweet shops in the old town serve no meat, and some no eggs.
- Vegan: ask about ghee, butter, yoghurt and milk, which go into almost everything. Our cooks will adapt dishes for you.
- Jain khana: ask for it and you get no onions, garlic or root vegetables. Most good hotels and many local kitchens understand the term at once.
- Allergies: tell us in advance so we can brief the kitchens, as nuts, gram flour and dairy appear in many dishes.
What to drink
Chaas, buttermilk
What it is: chaas is thin, salty buttermilk, sometimes spiced with roasted cumin and mint.
- When: the desert's everyday drink, served with lunch and at any time of heat.
- Why: it cools, it refreshes, and it helps a heavy meal go down.
Raabdi, the winter drink
What it is: raabdi, a thick drink of millet flour cooked slowly with buttermilk, sometimes overnight.
- Its history: farming families have lived on it for centuries.
- When: wonderful on a cold desert morning. Ask for it in December and January.
Lassi and chai
Lassi: churned yoghurt served sweet or salty, sold all over the old town.
- Chai: boiled with milk, sugar, ginger and cardamom, the rhythm of every day.
- Be warned: you will drink a great deal of both. Read about lassi in Jaipur for the wider tradition.
Alcohol
Where: beer and wine in hotels, camps and licensed restaurants, but not everywhere.
- Dry days: some days of the year alcohol is not sold.
- Heritage liqueurs: Rajasthan has a tradition of them, once made in royal households. Read our page on alcohol and dry days.
Eating through the year
Winter, from November to February
The season of millet: bajre ki roti with ghee, jaggery and white butter, and raabdi in the mornings.
- Sweets for warmth: gond ke laddoo and sesame sweets.
- Fresh greens: fenugreek and mustard leaves from the irrigated fields.
- The best season to eat: and the season for long dinners by a fire.
Summer, from March to June
Lighter and sourer: kadhi, chaas, raw mango, onion and kachri cool the body.
- The day's rhythm: families eat their heavy meal early and rest.
- Harvest of the larder: the khejri trees bear the sangri beans and the ker shrubs fruit, and the year's supply is picked and dried.
The monsoon, from July to September
Brief greens: after the rains, wild greens and fresh vegetables appear for a short while.
- Ghevar: sweet shops fill with it for Teej.
- Pakora weather: fried snacks taste best on a cloudy afternoon with a cup of chai, and every family has its favourite monsoon pakora.
Festival food all year
Temple offerings: churma and laddoos.
Weddings: malpua and rabri.
- Makar Sankranti: sweets of sesame and jaggery.
- Diwali: an explosion of sweets.
- If you are invited: you will be fed generously, and refusing is not an option.
Where we eat, and why we name so few places
Thali or desert dinner: we usually book our guests' own hotels, whose kitchens are reliable and often excellent, or a meal in a family home.
Saffron: the rooftop restaurant at Nachana Haveli, a heritage hotel in the old town, serves Rajasthani dishes with a view across the roofs.
Sweets: Dhanraj Bhatia's shop is the name every local gives for the ghotua laddoo.
- Thali
- Your hotel, or a family home
- Rooftop
- Saffron at Nachana Haveli
- Ghotua laddoo
- Dhanraj Bhatia's shop
- Street food
- The stalls our guides know
- Street food: our guides take you to the stalls the town itself trusts.
- A special evening: a rooftop table facing the fort, timed for the moment its floodlights come on.
- Or further out: a private dinner among the cenotaphs at Bada Bagh or on the dunes, always with care for the place. Our page on rooftop dining has more ideas.
- Camp food: in a desert camp it can be the highlight of the night or a sad buffet.
- The best camps: cook fresh, in small quantities, often over fire: ker sangri, kadhi, millet roti and a slow-cooked meat curry for those who want it.
- How we choose: partly on the strength of the kitchen, and we ask camps to cook for our guests rather than for a crowd. Read our guide to luxury desert camps.
Cooking with a Jaisalmer family
We arrange cooking sessions in family kitchens in the old town and in villages nearby. Then you sit down together to eat what you have made. It is relaxed, practical and warm, and it gives you recipes and a family's stories to take home.
Ker sangri: learn to soak and cook it.
- Kadhi: how to make the buttermilk curry.
- Millet roti: pat one out by hand and cook it over the flame.
- Garlic chutney: grind it on a stone.
- Fair and small: we pay our hosts properly and keep the groups small, usually just your own party.
- Read more: our cooking class in a haveli, and a food lover's Rajasthan, our journey built around the kitchens of the state.
Table etiquette in Jaisalmer
Right hand: eat with it. The left is traditionally kept for other tasks. Tear roti with the fingers of your right hand and use it to scoop up the curries.
Wash: before and after the meal. Your host will usually bring water and a bowl.
- Expect manuhar: the loving insistence that you eat more. To stop, cover your plate with your hand and say bas, enough, with a smile.
- A little at a time: leaving food on your plate is considered wasteful.
- In a Jain home: don't bring food containing meat, eggs, onions or garlic, and respect the custom of eating before sunset.
- Jain temples: don't take food or drink inside, and remove leather before you enter.
- Praise the food: in Rajasthan, telling your host it was delicious is the best thank you there is. Our page on etiquette and dress has more.
