Guides to traditional Indian snacks in the UK: Gujarati namkeen, sev, gathiya, chevda, pharsi puri and papdi, what makes them authentic and how to enjoy them.
Walk into a Gujarati kitchen before Diwali and you’ll smell it before you see it: sesame, cumin and hot oil, with a coil of dough sizzling in the pan. Ask the family what they’re making and they’ll say chakri. Ask a Maharashtrian neighbour and you’ll hear chakli. Ask a friend from Chennai and it’s murukku….
In a Gujarati home, chai is never served alone. The kettle goes on, and someone reaches for the tin, or the steel dabba, or the big glass jar on the top shelf. The best snacks for chai are dry, crunchy and salty-spicy, and they make a strong, sweet, milky cup taste even better. Three of…
Plan your Navratri in the UK with farali snacks, nuts, gathiya and Dussehra fafda. Authentic Gujarati snacks from Chandra Foods, delivered nationwide.
For Hindu households in the UK, vrat days come round more often than most people outside the community realise. Ekadashi twice a month, Shivratri, Janmashtami, the nine days of Navratri, Karva Chauth – each with its own food rules, all falling under the umbrella of farali eating. Which farali chevda counts as a proper fasting…
Indian snacking has always been about more than just taste – it’s built around variety, texture, and genuinely good ingredients like chickpeas, lentils, nuts, and seeds. The great news is that within this huge and varied tradition, there’s an enormous range of naturally wholesome options, from roasted and baked snacks to protein-rich nuts and seeds,…
There is a particular kind of satisfaction in opening a cupboard and finding everything you need to make a proper chaat, without a last-minute dash to the shops. A packet of sev, a box of papdi, some puri shells, a jar of chutney, and suddenly you can put together something that tastes like it came…
Pre-made snack boxes are convenient, but they’re built with the average customer in mind, not you specifically. If you know you always finish the sev first and never touch the boondi, or you’d take three packs of gathiya over one of everything else, a fixed combo can start to feel like a compromise rather than…
Scrolling through a list of combo boxes can be more confusing than helpful if you’re not entirely sure what each one is actually built for. Is the tea time combo different enough from the everyday nuts combo to justify getting both? Is the nuts and seeds box better for snacking or for smoothies? Rather than…
If you’ve ever stood in front of an Indian street food stall, or scrolled through a chaat menu at a restaurant, you’ve probably seen these three names sitting side by side: bhel puri, sev puri, and pani puri. They sound similar, they’re all served in small bowls or on little plates, and they all fall…
There is a particular kind of energy that comes from a pani puri night. Everyone gathers around the same table, hands get a little messy, and nobody is quite sitting down properly because the whole point is to keep moving between the puris, the pani, and whatever else is on the spread. If you are…
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