Chhattisgarh · Famous Food of Chhattisgarh

Famous Food of Chhattisgarh: 12 Dishes from Aamat to Bafauri

By Beauty of Bharat · Published 12 November 2026

By Beauty of Bharat — India travel guide, every place, every flavour.

Guides covering all 36 States and UTs, researched from official sources and checked at publish time. Corrections welcome — see About Beauty of Bharat.

The most famous chutney in Chhattisgarh is made of red ants — and a celebrity chef once called it the best chutney in the world. That is the first surprise of this kitchen. The famous food of Chhattisgarh is aamat, a sour mixed-vegetable curry with bamboo shoots, followed by fara, chila and bafauri — and the everyday table runs on bore basi, the fermented rice breakfast. Chhattisgarh is called the Rice Bowl of India, and almost everything here starts with rice: steamed, soaked, ground into flour, or left overnight to turn gently sour. Here are the 12 dishes that define it.

What is the famous food of Chhattisgarh?

Ask the question in Raipur and two names come back: aamat and fara. Aamat is the dish people search for most, while fara is the snack our state guide names first, with chila and bafauri close behind. The honest answer is that there is no single dish — this is a rice kitchen shaped by forests and fields. The state grows thousands of indigenous paddy varieties, and the grain is turned into flour for chila and fara, soaked overnight into bore basi, and fermented into rice beer. Leafy greens, bamboo shoots from the Bastar forests, and sun-dried dal nuggets called badi fill out the plate. See our Chhattisgarh state guide.

12 famous dishes of Chhattisgarh

1. Aamat — the sour curry at the top of the list

Aamat means sour, and the name tells you everything. It is a thin, hot, tangy stew of mixed seasonal vegetables — often with bamboo shoots, called gondi or kareel — soured with tamarind or raw mango and built on garlic rather than onion. Strongest in the south, where the plains meet the Bastar plateau, it is often called Chhattisgarh’s version of sambar. Eaten with steamed rice, it is the dish that turns a plain meal into a Chhattisgarhi one. Read our aamat guide.

2. Bafauri — the steamed snack that beats the pakoda

Bafauri is Chhattisgarh’s answer to the pakoda — except it is steamed, never fried. Soaked chana dal is ground coarse with garlic, green chilli and spices, shaped into small dumplings and steamed until firm and soft inside. Protein-rich and light, it is usually eaten with green chutney or tea — a snack that exists because oil was expensive and a steamer was not. Read our bafauri guide.

3. Bore basi — yesterday’s rice, today’s breakfast

Bore basi is the single most widely eaten thing in Chhattisgarh, and it is a genuine daily practice, not a revival. Cooked rice is soaked overnight in water or buttermilk and eaten the next morning, cool and faintly fizzy, with salt, onion, green chilli and pickle. It is the breakfast of the fields, eaten at dawn before work, and the ideal summer food. It is so central to the state’s identity that the Government of Chhattisgarh has promoted it since 2022 through Bore Basi Diwas, celebrated every year on 1 May. Read our bore basi guide.

4. Fara — the steamed rice rolls

Fara — also called muthia — is rice dough rolled into short fingers, steamed, then tossed in a tempering of mustard seeds, curry leaves and green chilli. Sometimes stuffed with spiced chana dal; made sweet with jaggery inside, it becomes a festival dish rather than a meal. Visitors often call it a desi momo, and the comparison is fair. It is the dish most travellers meet first in Chhattisgarh, and the one they ask for again. Read our fara guide.

5. Chila — the rice-flour pancake

Chila is the breakfast pancake of the Chhattisgarh plains: rice flour batter cooked on a griddle, eaten hot with green chilli-garlic or tomato chutney. Deep-fried, the same batter becomes chausela, a crisp rice puri. Simple, quick and everywhere, from village kitchens to Raipur’s breakfast stalls — rice flour, heat, and a sharp chutney to wake it up. Read our chila guide.

6. Dhuska — the crisp rice-flour bread

Dhuska is a fried bread from a rice-flour batter, crisp at the edges and soft inside, eaten with chutney or a simple vegetable curry. Shared with neighbouring Jharkhand, where it is just as beloved — a reminder that food here follows the old map of the region, not the state border drawn in 2000. Look for it at breakfast stalls and village fairs rather than on restaurant menus.

7. Dubki kadhi — the tangy yoghurt curry

Dubki kadhi is the everyday gravy of the Chhattisgarhi thali. Soft dumplings of soaked and ground urad dal — dubki means a dip, a plunge — are dropped into a tangy buttermilk and gram-flour gravy tempered with mustard, curry leaves, garlic and red chilli. It moistens the rice on an ordinary day — sour, warm comfort food from whatever the kitchen already had.

8. Chaprah — the red-ant chutney

Here is the hook, paid off. Chaprah — also called chapda or kai chutney — is a chutney made from red weaver ants and their eggs, gathered from nests woven out of sal leaves in the Bastar forests. The ants and eggs are dried, ground with a mortar and pestle, then mixed with tomato, coriander, garlic, ginger, chilli, salt and a little sugar into a smooth orange paste. It is fiercely hot — formic acid plus chillies makes it one of the spiciest things you will ever taste. Tribal families in Bastar have eaten it for centuries, valuing its protein and its traditional use against colds and stomach trouble; vendors sell it in small sal-leaf packets at weekly markets. When celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay visited Bastar in 2010, he called it the world’s best chutney. One honest note: the chutney’s GI tag was awarded to Odisha on 2 January 2024 — the dish is shared across three states, and Chhattisgarh’s claim to it is cultural, not legal.

9. Khurmi — the jaggery biscuit of the festivals

Khurmi is a jaggery-and-wheat-flour biscuit flavoured with sesame and ajwain, made for the Hareli and Teeja festivals. Crisp, dark and quietly sweet, it keeps well — which is the point, since it is made in bulk for celebrations. Its savoury twin, thethri, is made from the same dough without the jaggery.

10. Dehrori — the state’s signature dessert

Dehrori is the sweet Chhattisgarh is proudest of. Fermented ground rice mixed with curd is shaped into small discs, deep-fried until crisp, then soaked in cardamom sugar syrup — a rice doughnut with a faint sour complexity underneath the sweetness. You will find it in sweet shops in Raipur and Bilaspur, and it is the dessert most often served at celebrations — the fermentation is the giveaway that this is a rice culture even in its sweets.

11. Kusli — the sweet dumpling

Kusli is a small sweet dumpling, filled and folded like a gujiya, and a familiar name on Raipur’s sweet-shop shelves alongside dehrori, khurmi and balushahi. It turns up at festivals and family gatherings rather than on restaurant menus — homemade, shared, and gone by evening. Ask for it in the old sweet shops around Raipur’s markets.

12. Mahua and handia — the forest drinks

No guide to Chhattisgarh’s food is complete without its drinks, though you will rarely find them on a menu. Mahua comes from the flowers of the mahua tree, and handia — also called landa — is rice beer, fermented at home and shared at tribal festivals and celebrations. These are cultural drinks, not restaurant items — part of harvests, weddings and community gatherings. Travellers should treat them with respect and never press a host for them.

What is the traditional food of Chhattisgarh?

Rice, greens and the forest. The traditional plate is steamed rice, a dal or a sour curry like aamat, a pile of leafy greens, and something from the forest: bamboo shoots, mushrooms, or the chutneys of the season. Badi and bijori, sun-dried nuggets of ground urad dal, are fried and simmered into thick curries when fresh vegetables run short. Much of it is served on a sal-leaf pattal and eaten by hand. It is a cuisine that wastes nothing and fries little — steaming, soaking and souring do most of the work. See our best food in India guide for the national picture.

Where to try Chhattisgarh food

Start in Raipur, where dhabas serve fara, chila, bafauri and aamat alongside the usual north Indian menus, and the old sweet shops sell dehrori, khurmi and kusli. In Jagdalpur and the Bastar weekly haats, the food gets wilder: aamat with bamboo shoots, chaprah sold in sal-leaf packets, and handia at festivals. The best versions are often in village homestays, where the food is cooked over wood fires — ask for the local thali, not a fixed menu. Our Chhattisgarh state guide points to the places, and the same rice-flour cooking continues across the border in our famous food of Jharkhand and famous food of Odisha guides.

Watch & Feel the Place: Chhattisgarh Food on Film

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Famous Food of Chhattisgarh FAQs

Chhattisgarh’s food is what the Rice Bowl tastes like: rice steamed, soaked, soured and ground into flour; bamboo shoots from the Bastar forests; and a chutney made of red ants that a celebrity chef called the best in the world. Next, read our famous food of Jharkhand — the same red-ant chutney and dhuska on a different table just across the border — or our best food in India guide to see how all 36 states eat.