How to Eat Like An Indian

Something crazy about Indian food culture is that they eat with their hands! Utensils are sometimes used and especially in more westernized, up-scale places, but on a whole the culture is ditch the fork and dive right in. You don't eat with both hands though, and for a very good reason. You eat with your right hand only. The left hand is considered dirty because another thing Indians also don't use is toilet paper. The left hand and water becomes the toilet paper, so eating with the left hand is not something you want to do!

You might imagine that eating rice, liquid-y things like dal, and a flat bread like chapati might be difficult to do with just one hand. I sure did! Luckily at our orientation we were well-trained in how to eat like an Indian. I personally love doing it and hardly ever use utensils anymore; and once you learn how through my demo below, I encourage you to try! My host mom says Indians do it to connect with their food. See what you think.

 

Very normal dinner plate: Chapati, yogurt and tomato salad, vegetable baji, and rice. This is how we start..

...You have to mix it together!!

But with things being generally a bit dry, you need to add some dal.

But now things might be too wet, won't they?    Wrong! You use the dal as a sort of glue so that things turn out like...

..This! Now you can pinch the rice mixture into a sizeable amount.

If you want to just eat the rice without chapati, you > have to use a very important thumb technique to do it right. It seems obvious, but it wasn't at first to us and we looked pretty ridiculous trying to figure out how to put rice in our mouths without making a mess. The trick is to put your thumb like I have mine here. Then when you put it up to your mouth, you push the rice in with that thumb and it slides right in. Simple.

<Now if you want to eat your chapati, you also have to use a little technique to tear it. Remember, you only have one hand. It took a little practice and someone showing us, but you basically use a pinch-and-pull method while the chapati is folded in half to get a good piece off.

Then you can use it as a pick-up tool for your rice. Chapati tastes good with everything, and so it is eaten almost always at lunch and dinner.

Proper technique and a delicious meal makes a happy eater :)