A Journey Through India’s Infinite Kitchen”

Today’s Times of India featured a truly revolutionary and interesting article that gave a new dimension to the flavours of India. We thought, why not share a little of that flavour and a little of that love with you? So, let’s go on a journey through India along with its flavours.

Imagine you’re at a dinner table somewhere in Lucknow, and someone asks you, “What’s your favourite Indian food?” You say “biryani.” The person next to you — a Hyderabadi — smirks. The person opposite — a Kolkata native — looks mildly offended. The one from Kerala quietly puts down his fork. And the fellow from Manipur stares at you like you’ve said something cosmically wrong. You have not offended one person. You have offended an entire subcontinent.

Welcome to India’s kitchen — the most gloriously, chaotically, unapologetically diverse restaurant on Earth. Except it isn’t one restaurant. It’s about 4,000 restaurants, all under the same leaky roof, all arguing about whose dal is correct.

“Never ask for Indian cuisine. It means nothing. If amchur works for Lucknow, it’s kokum for Kochi.”

The Biryani That Started a War

Let’s begin with biryani — because in India, everything either begins with biryani or ends in an argument about biryani. This article opens beautifully with the image of a potato sitting royally in Bengal’s biryani. Now, if you are not from Bengal, this potato might confuse you. A potato? In biryani? That’s not biryani, that’s — well, that’s Bengal’s biryani, and it has a backstory more dramatic than most Bollywood films.

The story goes: when Nawab Wajid Ali Shah was exiled to Calcutta by the British in 1856, his royal kitchens — used to the finest mutton and saffron — had to make do with the budget of a man who’d just lost his entire kingdom. The clever khansamas (royal cooks) started substituting expensive meat with a big, hearty potato. And thus, a culinary tradition was born out of colonial trauma. The humble aloo became an aristocrat.

My story: A friend of mine from Lucknow once visited Kolkata and ordered biryani. When it arrived with a whole potato in it, he called the waiter and said, “Bhai, I think there’s been a mistake.” The waiter looked at him with the patience of a man who has explained this 10,000 times and said: “Sir, yahi toh biryani hai.” My friend ate it. He called it a revelation. He now orders it specifically.

And that’s the point, isn’t it? There are 26 types of biryani documented across India — more variations exist in the southern states alone than the entire north has ever invented. Ambur, Dindigul, Thalassery, Bhatkali — each one a universe. Each one insisting, quietly but firmly, that it is The One True Biryani.

Every grain of rice has a story,
Every spice has a memory to tell.
The pot that simmers on your neighbour’s stove
Cook a world you’ve never smelled.

The Dal That Has 50 Faces

If biryani is India’s most contested dish, dal is its most democratic one. Over 50 varieties of dal — cooked in “a zillion ways.” And that’s not an exaggeration; it’s almost an understatement.

In Punjab, dal makhani slow-cooks through the night, luxuriating in butter and cream, a dish that practically whispers, “Don’t rush me.” In Gujarat, dal is sweet — yes, sweet — with a jaggery tang that shocks North Indians at first bite. In Maharashtra, you’ll encounter varan, simple and ghostly pale, poured over rice with a river of ghee. In Tamil Nadu, paruppu with a tadka of mustard and curry leaves is as sacred as temple prasad. And somewhere in Rajasthan, panchmel dal — made with five lentils — is served with baati, a dish that basically dares you to try and finish it.

Same ingredient. Fifty outcomes. That’s not a recipe — that’s a philosophy.

26Types of Biryani

50+Varieties of Dal

400Shades of Red Chilli

100kmCuisine changes every

Every 100 Kilometres, A New Kitchen

It sounds like exaggeration, but it is actually geography: cuisine across India changes every 100 kilometres, maybe even less. Drive from Mangalore to Udupi — barely 60 kilometres — and the food shifts. The coconut stays, but the spicing changes, the texture changes, the ritual of eating changes.

This happens because India’s diversity isn’t just cultural — it’s geological. Mountains, coasts, deserts, river valleys, rainforests, plateaus — every topography creates its own pantry. The Western Ghats give you kokum, raw mango, and coconut. The Gangetic plains give you mustard oil and maida. The Deccan Plateau roasts its lentils before grinding them. The Northeast ferments everything — bamboo shoots, fish, pork — with a confidence that makes European cheesemakers seem timid.

And then religion, caste, and community add their own layers. A Brahmin kitchen in Tamil Nadu is not the same as a Nadar kitchen next door. A Bohra Muslim feast in Gujarat and a Mapilla feast in Kerala are both “Muslim food” only in the broadest bureaucratic sense. They taste like different planets.

“Every line that draws diversity adds a culinary twist too — by region, faith, caste, foreign influence.”

The Foreigners Who Came for Spice and Stayed for Dinner

Let’s talk about the uninvited guests who, bless them, left something delicious behind. The Portuguese gave us the vindaloo (from “vinho e alho” — wine and garlic), the pav (yes, the bread!), and a whole tradition of sour-spicy Goan cooking. The Mughals brought their Central Asian techniques — dum cooking, kebabs, korma — which then got hybridised with Indian spices into something neither Central Asian nor purely Indian, but transcendently both.

The Parsis, who fled Persia 1,200 years ago and landed on Gujarat’s coast, gave us dhansak — a gorgeous lamb and lentil stew — and the Irani café, which gave Mumbai its cutting chai culture. The Dutch and British, who came for trade and stayed for conquest, are credited with “boring British food” — a diplomatic description of a culinary legacy that includes, well, boiled things.

True Story: The word “chutney” is Indian. The British loved it so much they exported the concept to England, where it became “Major Grey’s Chutney” — a mango preserve sold globally. They took something Indian, renamed it, and sold it back to the world. This is peak colonialism and peak chutney, simultaneously.

And Chinese food? “As for Chinese, we verily own it.” Absolutely. Indo-Chinese cuisine — Manchurian, schezwan fried rice, chilli paneer — bears almost no resemblance to anything actually served in China. It is an entirely Indian invention, born in the Chinese-origin community of Kolkata, and now as Indian as Ganesh Chaturthi and cricket controversies.

North Loves Ghee. South Loves Coconut Milk. And Never Shall the Two Meet (Except in Your Stomach)

There is a lovely battle line: “One cook’s ghee is another’s coconut milk.” This is not just about fat. This is identity. This is belonging. This is the thing that makes a Keralite in Delhi look mildly pained when they see dal makhani described as “rich.” Rich? RICH? Have you had a Kerala sadya? 28 dishes on a banana leaf, including payasam in three forms, served while you sit cross-legged on the floor? THAT is rich. Dal makhani is merely enthusiastic.

North India has its ghee-laden gravies, its tandoori glory, its stuffed parathas that could anchor a boat. South India has its rice-forward logic, its rasam (the world’s most underrated soup), its idli — a dish so gentle, so perfectly engineered for human digestion that nutritionists basically weep with joy. West India has dhokla, thepla, and a sweet tooth that could rival a confectioner. East India has mishti doi, maach, and mustard-forward cooking that clears your sinuses before the food even touches your tongue.

The North has its ghee, the South its sea,
The East has its rivers, the West has its free.
You cannot taste India in a single bite —
She takes a lifetime, and still keeps you hungry.

400 Shades of Red — The Chilli That Unifies and Divides

Now to the headline. 400 shades of red chillies. This is not a metaphor — this is botany and marketplace reality. From the gentle Kashmiri chilli, which gives colour but barely any heat (a chilli that went to finishing school), to the Bhut Jolokia of Assam — the ghost pepper — which was once certified by Guinness as the world’s hottest chilli and has been used in military-grade tear gas grenades. Between these two extremes lies an entire spectrum of fire.

The Guntur chilli of Andhra Pradesh is so aggressively hot that Andhra cuisine has built an entire identity around surviving it. The Byadgi chilli of Karnataka imparts a deep, almost wine-like colour to dishes. The Kanthari chilli of Kerala is tiny, white, and absolutely demonic. The Reshampatti of Madhya Pradesh is fragrant and fiery together. Each one shapes the food of its region so completely that removing it would be like removing a personality.

And this is the deepest point: a pinch of this chilli, a dash of that — and suddenly food becomes a celebration. India doesn’t just cook with chillies. India thinks in chillies. Plans in chillies. Mourns, celebrates and argues in chillies.

The Conclusion: There Is No Such Thing as “Indian Cuisine”

This is an end with a statement that is simultaneously obvious and revolutionary: there’s no such thing as “Indian cuisine.” There are Indian cuisines — plural, fierce, proud, and mutually incomprehensible to each other on their best days.

If you ate a completely different Indian regional dish every day of the year — 365 days, no repeats — you would, “probably” be able to claim you’ve explored cuisine from All Over India. But you still couldn’t say you’d eaten everything. India’s kitchen has no ceiling. It has no last dish. It has no final word.

Closing Thought: 

There is a reason Indians, when they travel abroad and encounter a restaurant called “Indian Food,” feel a complex cocktail of emotions — pride, confusion, mild betrayal, and the specific sadness of seeing something enormous compressed into something small. Indian food is not butter chicken and naan. It is 1.4 billion stories simmering in 1.4 billion pots, every single day. The only thing they have in common is that they’re all convinced theirs is the best. And honestly? They’re all right.

She is not one flavour, she is not one fire,
She is a thousand kitchens and a thousand desires.
Call her Indian food — she’ll smile and say,
“Which India, darling? There are more than you’ve seen today.”

🌶️   Bon Appétit. Or as we say: Khana khao, jhagda baad mein.   🌶️

(Happy meal. Have food now; the fight can wait.)

🌶️🌶️🌶️Inspired by “400 Shades of Chillies” — Times of India
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS INDIAN CUISINE. THERE ARE ONLY INDIAN CUISINES.