Dry fruits in Mewar’s churma: what goes in, and how much for a family batch

Across Mewar, dal-baati-churma is the meal for gatherings. Cook it for a Sunday lunch, a puja or a house full of relatives and the churma is the part people judge. Here is how we would put the dry fruit side together.

What churma is, and where the dry fruits sit

Churma is wheat that has been cooked, then crumbled and bound with ghee and sweetness. Some homes crush baked or fried baatis. Others knead a stiff, ghee-rich atta dough into fist-sized muthiya, fry them slowly and grind them coarse. Sugar, boora or gur goes in once the crumb has cooled a little.

The dry fruits come last, folded into the warm crumb so the ghee coats them. That matters. Nuts added to churma are not cooked again, so they need to taste good exactly as they come out of the bag. A stale cashew in a gravy can hide. A stale cashew in churma cannot.

The everyday churma: kaju, badam, kishmish

• Kaju (cashew). Chopped or broken, never whole. It gives churma its soft, rich bite. You do not need a whole grade here. Kaju Tukda is the same kernel for less money, and you were going to chop it anyway.
• Badam (almond). Chopped, or thin slices if you want them to show. Badam Katran comes already sliced, which saves the fiddliest job in the kitchen.
• Kishmish (raisins). Whole. The small bursts of sweetness matter most when the churma is made with gur. We use our long green kishmish for this.
• Elaichi (green cardamom). Powdered fresh, just before mixing. Pre-ground elaichi loses its smell within weeks.

Our guide to kaju grades explains why whole and broken cashews taste the same. For churma that is the only point that matters.

Festive churma: what gets added

When churma is made for an occasion, such as churma laddoo for Ganesh puja, a wedding meal or a big family feast, most Mewari kitchens make it richer, not different.

• Charoli (chironji). Small, soft and faintly sweet. A spoonful toasted in a little ghee and scattered through the churma is what many people remember from festive batches. Buy Charoli in small amounts. It is oily and goes stale faster than almonds.
• Pista. Mostly for colour on top of laddoos or the serving thali. Pista Katran is already slivered.
• More ghee and more nuts. The festive version is simply more generous. Roughly half as much nut again as the everyday batch.

Some families also make a bajra churma in the cooler months, sweetened with gur. The same dry fruits work in it, and kishmish and kaju carry the heavier grain especially well.

How much to buy for a family batch

These are the quantities we would plan around for a batch made from 500 g of atta, which is enough churma for about six people eating it alongside dal and baati. Scale up in the same ratio for a gathering.

For a gathering of around thirty people you are making five batches. That comes to a little under a kilo of kaju, badam and kishmish together, plus 100 g each of charoli and pista katran. That is where buying in 500 g and 1 kg packs starts to make sense.

Buying for churma in Udaipur

We are a short run from Udaipur, and orders usually arrive in a day or two. You can check today’s dry fruit prices in Udaipur on the city page. As a rough guide, cashews run around at today's shop rate a kilo and almonds around at today's shop rate with broken kaju at the lower end. Delivery is free on orders over ₹1,000. Below that, a delivery charge is added at checkout.

Two practical points for a hot, dry city:

• Order nuts a week or so before a function, not a month. Kaju and charoli lose their sweetness sitting in a warm kitchen.
• Keep opened packs in an airtight jar. Charoli is best kept in the fridge once opened.

Everything else for churma is on our dry fruits shelf.

Questions people ask