Tahri (also tapahri) is a yellow rice dish in

North Indian cuisine North Indian cuisine is collectively the cuisine of Northern India, which includes the cuisines of Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and adjoining western Bihar. Sub-types of No ...

. Spices are added to plain cooked rice for flavor and colour. In one version of Tahri,

potato The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Wild potato species can be found from the southern Unit ...

es are added to the rice. In other variants soyabean chunks, vegetables, onions, tomatoes and many different spices are also added.

Etymology

As per ''Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary'', the

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...

word ''Tahri'' is derived from

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

word ''Tāpaharī'', which is a dish prepared from rice, dal chunks ''(badi)'', vegetables, cooked in

ghee Ghee is a type of clarified butter, originating from India. It is commonly used in India for cooking, as a traditional medicine, and for religious rituals. Description Ghee is typically prepared by simmering butter, which is churned from c ...

with spices especially turmeric.

Origin

The recipe for ''Tahari'' has mentions with name ''Tapahari'' in ''Bhāvaprakāśa Nighaṇṭu'',an ancient

Ayurvedic Ayurveda () is an alternative medicine system with historical roots in the Indian subcontinent. The theory and practice of Ayurveda is pseudoscientific. Ayurveda is heavily practiced in India and Nepal, where around 80% of the population rep ...

treatise written in Sanskrit language. The recipe for ''Tahari'' also finds mention in ''Bhojanakutūhala'', another Sanskrit book on cookery and culinary traditions. ''Bhojanakutūhala'' asserts that ''tāpaharī'' is a very famous dish in

Northern India North India is a loosely defined region consisting of the northern part of India. The dominant geographical features of North India are the Indo-Gangetic Plain and the Himalayas, which demarcate the region from the Tibetan Plateau and Central ...

. The ingredients for cooking ''tāpaharī'' are black gram '' vaṭakas'', rice grains, ghee, turmeric, wet ginger, asafoetida, water and salt. ''Vaṭakas'' were prepared from black-gram flour and mixed with turmeric, fried in ghee with washed rice grains. Adequate water with salt, ginger and asafoetida was added to this mixture. This preparation was called ''taharī'' or ''tāpaharī''.

Popularity

Tahari became more popular during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

when meat prices increased substantially and

became the popular substitute in biryani.Taste the Tehri

References

Pakistani rice dishes North Indian cuisine Indian rice dishes Kashmiri cuisine Street food {{food-stub