Nagaland, located in northeastern India, has a cuisine that varies among its 16 tribes but commonly features rice, pork, chicken, insects, vegetables, and spicy chili sauces. Some iconic Nagaland dishes include smoked pork stew with potatoes, tomatoes and chili; pork cooked with dry bamboo shoots; boiled vegetables served with most meals; and steamed fish or glutinous rice soup cooked inside bamboo tubes over an open fire. Nagaland cuisine emphasizes fresh, local ingredients and minimal seasoning so the natural flavors can shine through spicy sauces.

1. NAGALAND
FOOD
CUISINE
PRESENT BY
ANKUR KURKUMAR

2. Nagaland, located in very Northeastern
India, is a state that’s just north of
Myanmar and just south of China and
Bhutan

3. sixteen main tribes in Nagaland, each
with similar yet unique traditions and
practices. While food from each tribe
overlaps, there are also certain dishes
that are specifically known from a certain
tribe. Rice, pork, chicken, dog, insects
and worms, vegetables, and famous chili
sauces are essential in the Naga diet

4. Tathu : This is a hot preparation or chutney. It is usually
prepared by making paste of chillis and leaves or dry meat or
fermented fish. Leaves of Colocasia esculenta are boiled and
then smashed and dried for preparing chutney
Ghabe :- It is prepared by boiling only green leaves. No
garlic, chilli, fermented soyabean or dry fish are added. Figure 3
shows Ghabe.

5. Galkemeluo : It is prepared by boiling wild leaves
with bamboo shoot, garlic, tomato, potato, dry or smoked
meat, dry fish, fermented soyabean, Zanthoxylum rhetsa and
Zanthoxylum armatum. Tomato is specially added to give
slight sour taste. Galkemeluo of snail and fishes (especially
Clarias) are also prepared. For preparing Galkemeluo of
Clarias, banana flowers are separately boiled and cooked
with flesh of Clarias, leaves of Zanthoxylum armatum or
Zanthoxylum rhetsa and chillis. Figure 4 shows Galkemeluo

6. Dried Pork
A traditional Naga kitchen is outdoors because a fire is one of the
most essential components of cooking. Hanging above any Naga
kitchen fire will be pieces of meat (both pork and beef), that slowly dry
out and smoke high above the flames.
After weeks or sometimes much longer than that, the meat is ready to
be consumed. For one meal we just ate some of the smoked pork, and
another time we enjoyed a stew made from the meat.

7. Smoked Pork Stew
Just as good as the plain smoked meat, was
the smoked pork stew. The dried smoky
pork was chopped into bite sized pieces
before being boiled in a thin soup that
included potatoes, tomatoes, and chillies.

8. Nagaland Pork w/ Dry
Bamboo Shoots
One of the most famous
Nagaland food dishes is dry
bamboo shoots cooked with
pork. This was one of the
first dishes I had as soon as I
arrived to Nagaland, and I
was thrilled.
In Nagaland, just like in
Thailand or Korea, they are
serious when it comes to
pork. So you won’t be eating
thin strips of bite sized pork,
they cook with huge chunks
of pig. Often the pork is quite
fatty, often big cubes of pork
belly mixed in. If you’re a
pork lover, you’ll have a blast
in Nagaland.

9. Boiled Vegetables
With nearly every meal I ate in Nagaland, we had
a number of different boiled vegetables – most of
the time cabbage, long beans, and melon.
Vegetables are most commonly boiled without
any seasoning.

10. Roasted Intestines
Since pig is such a huge part of Naga food culture, you can be assured
that nothing is wasted, and internal organs happen to be some of the
most prized possessions (and rightfully so, they are some of the most
flavorful).

11. This healthy earthy mixture included beans, tomatoes, peas,
cabbage and all sort of other natural Nagaland ingredients. It
was a delicious concoction that wasn’t overly strong in flavor,
but more of a garnish for rice and intended to be eaten with
other stronger chili sauces and curries.
Beans Mix

12. Being a huge fan of bitter melon, I was happy to see a
big bowl of it for one of our meals in Nagaland. They
were the little Indian bitter melons.
Bitter
Melon

13. Bamboo grows everywhere in Nagaland, and it has many different uses.
One of the common ways to cook is using tubes of bamboo.
Cooked by Grandfather himself, fish were stuffed into a hollow tube of
bamboo with a few light spices and then placed in the ash of the fire to
cook.
After the fish were cooked, they were simply emptied out of the
bamboo into a bowl and ready to be served. They were quite plain and
boney, but I could detect a nice hint of bamboo flavor in the fish. Along
with some of the chili sauce, they were really good.
Bamboo
Steamed
Fish

14. Chicken Glutinous Rice
Soup
Few things are as
pleasing a purchasing a
live chicken at the
market and eating her
just a few moments
later.
We went to the market in
Dimapur, chose a nice
little chicken, a free
range village chicken
that is, and went back to
the house. The chicken
was cooked in a
glutinous rice sauce. Just
like many other
Nagaland foods, it
wasn’t cooked overly
spiced, but it was served
along with some chili
sauced which provided
extreme flavor.

15. Crab Chili Sauce
Another great
combination was the
crab version. It was a
little runnier than the
dry eel chili sauce, but
this was also very good.
I was surprised how
non-fishy it tasted.

16. Naga Ghost Chili Sauce
On my last night in
Nagaland, a friend cooked
up a feast that contained
dishes specifically from
her home village in
Nagaland. This blend of
ingredients (I’m sorry, I
honestly don’t know what
all was in here) was
miraculou

17. Thank you
Ankur kumar
1941111041
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