Every year after Diwali, Delhi goes through the same routine. AQI screenshots start doing the rounds on WhatsApp groups, schools move classes online, and morning walks get put off until further notice. This year has been worse than usual. Delhi recorded its most polluted Diwali in the last five years, and by the next morning, 15 monitoring stations across the city were in the ‘severe’ category.
Through all of this, the kitchen is still running, and what gets cooked in it changes a fair bit. Mothers add more adrak to the chai, gur replaces sugar in half the things on the table, and methi and sarson start showing up in the fridge every other day. Most of these habits were picked up from nanis and dadis, and Delhi families still follow them every winter.
Haldi Doodh Every Night
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Haldi doodh is the one thing nobody in a Delhi home gets out of in winter. It usually comes around at night, made with full cream milk, a spoon of haldi, a pinch of kali mirch and sometimes a small piece of ginger. Some families add a little ghee, some use gur in place of sugar, and some people prefer it with nothing extra at all. Children complain about it every single year. They also end up drinking it every single year.
Everyone’s Kadha Recipe
The base of most kadhas is usually kali mirch, dalchini, tulsi, laung, and adrak, which are boiled for approximately 15 minutes until it develops a dark brown shade. Beyond that, every household has its own version. Mulethi is common in Punjabi homes, ajwain shows up in others, and a spoon of honey with some lemon is also largely preferred by many. Very few people actually like the taste. It still gets made quite frequently once November starts, and nobody in the house is excused from drinking it.
Also Read: 6 Superfoods To Support Immunity & Detox During Smog Season
The Sweet Winter Tin
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Revdi, gajak, gur ki chikki and til ke laddoo take over most of the snacking between November and January. Also, the older generation has a firm belief that gur helps “clean the chest” when the air is bad. Doctors may not say the same, but a piece of gur after lunch is a winter habit in many Delhi homes.
Sarson, Bathua And Methi Season
Sarson ka saag with makki ki roti is a Sunday lunch fixture in a lot of Punjabi homes. Methi parathas go into tiffins through the week, and bathua is mostly used in raita or as a paratha stuffing. Many families have also started washing their greens twice during these weeks, and some also soak them in salt water before cooking.
Shorba And Plenty Of Khichdi
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Dinners get noticeably lighter on the worst AQI days. South Indian families in the city make rasam with imli, garlic and a lot of black pepper. North Indian homes tend to go for tomato shorba or a plain khichdi with ghee and papad on the side. None of these takes much effort to cook, and they’re usually what people want after a long day indoors with the windows shut.
The Dahi Debate
There’s one fight that happens in almost every Delhi home in winter, and it’s about curd. Dadi will say no dahi if you have a cold, while the younger lot thinks that’s an old wives’ tale and eats it anyway. What most families end up doing is keeping dahi for lunch and making sure it isn’t taken out of the fridge and eaten cold. Chaas also comes back after heavy meals, especially after a plate of saag and makki ki roti, with some bhuna jeera and kala namak mixed in.
Less Street Food, More Ghar Ka Khana
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This might be the biggest change of all. Even people who can’t go a week without golgappe or momos tend to cut down on street food when the AQI is really high, because nobody’s comfortable eating food that’s been cooked in the open in that air. The weekend chaat run turns into chole bhature made at home, and Sunday plans in Chandni Chowk get pushed to next month. Of course, none of this fixes the pollution, and masks, purifiers and seeing a doctor for a cough that won’t go away still matter more than anything on the plate. But for most Delhi families, cooking at home with gur, greens, haldi and adrak is just how they get through the smog season.