R063Cabbage Thoran
The master thoran: shredded cabbage, crushed coconut, turmeric
Recipes › Vegetables: The Half of the Plate
R069
Avial
Mixed vegetables in coarse coconut-cumin paste, finished with raw coconut oil
Photograph: Adobe Stock · representative of the dish
The re-engineeringThe coconut oil goes in raw at the end, all 10 g of it, which is how avial was always finished before the habit of cooking in 25–30 g crept in. The coconut paste stays as it is, because the paste is the dish.
By legend, avial was invented by Bhima during the Pandavas' thirteenth year of exile, when he cooked in King Virata's kitchen under the name Vallala — in one telling to satisfy the sage Durvasa, in another after the Nagas revived him and he came back ravenous. Other stories credit Sakthan Thampuran of Cochin, or the Travancore Dewan Ramayyan Dalawa. This is legend, not history: avial has more origin stories than it has ingredients, which is usually a sign that nobody knows. What is genuinely notable is that mixing many vegetables in one pot ran against classical convention, which is probably why the dish needed a story at all.
Before you start: Avial is a dish of staggered timings, so cut every vegetable before you light the flame and keep them in three separate piles: slow (chena, plantain), medium (carrot, drumstick), fast (ash gourd, snake gourd). Grind the paste before you start cooking. Once the pan is on there is no time.
Avial
Active 30 minutes Total 45 minutes
Scale
6 servings
Ingredients — tap to tick off
- ✓150 g (about ½ medium) elephant foot yam (chena), peeled and cut into 5 cm × 1 cm batons
- ✓150 g (about 1) green plantain, peeled and cut into 5 cm × 1 cm batons
- ✓130 g (about 2) carrots, cut into 5 cm × 1 cm batons
- ✓120 g (about 2) drumstick pods, cut into 6 cm lengths
- ✓150 g (a 15 cm length) snake gourd, seeded and cut into 5 cm × 1 cm batons
- ✓200 g (about 1½ cups, cut) ash gourd, peeled, seeded and cut into 5 cm × 1 cm batons
- ✓3.5 g (⅔ tsp) salt, or M07
- ✓2 g (⅓ tsp) ground turmeric
- ✓100 g (1⅓ cups) freshly grated coconut
- ✓15 g (3) green chillies
- ✓3 g (¾ tsp) cumin seed
- ✓30 g (about 3) shallots
- ✓100 g (about 6 tbsp) thick sour curd, whisked smooth
- ✓10 g (2 tsp) coconut oil, raw, to finish
- ✓3 g (2 sprigs) curry leaves
Allergens: Milk.
Equipment: Wide heavy pan or uruli, 26 cm, with a lid; mixie or ammikkallu for the paste; chattuvam. Substitute: a wide saucepan and a small food processor. The paste can be made in a mortar, which gives a better texture and takes ten minutes.
Per serving (estimated)
| Energy | 162 kcal |
| Protein | 3.7 g |
| Fibre | 7.7 g |
| Net carbohydrate | 15.3 g |
| Total carbohydrate | 23.0 g |
| Sugars | 4.9 g |
| Fat | 9.5 g |
| Saturated fat | 7.9 g |
| Sodium | 280 mg |
From ICMR-NIN IFCT 2017 and USDA FoodData Central. Per-serving figures stay the same when you scale.
Method — tap a step to mark it done, tap a time to start a timer
- Grind the coconut, green chilli, cumin and shallots to a coarse paste with 3 tablespoons of water, in short pulses. It must stay grainy — you should feel individual coconut particles between finger and thumb. A smooth paste makes a gluey avial and is the fault that ruins this dish most often.
- Put the chena and plantain in the pan with the turmeric, salt and 150 ml water. Cover and simmer , until a baton yields at the edge but is still firm at the centre.
- Add the carrot and drumstick and cook covered .
- Add the snake gourd and ash gourd and cook covered until everything is tender but every piece still holds its shape as a baton, . The pan should be almost dry: tilt it, and no more than a spoonful of liquid should run.
- Fold in the coconut paste, lifting with the chattuvam rather than stirring, and cook on a low flame , until the raw shallot smell lifts and the paste coats the vegetables in a thick opaque layer.
- Take the pan off the heat. Fold in the whisked curd. It must not boil or it will split.
- Finish with the raw coconut oil and the curry leaves, crushed between your palms as they go in. Cover and let it stand before serving. That five minutes is not optional: it is when the raw oil and the curry leaf perfume the whole dish.
Why this worksAvial is thenga aracha at its purest: the body comes from ground coconut, a suspension of insoluble particles that hold water, not from an emulsion. That is why avial reheats without splitting where olan does not, and why the paste must stay coarse — smooth particles pack together and turn a coating into a paste. The raw oil at the end delivers aroma the tongue meets directly, which is why 10 g reads like 25 g.
Sourcing note
The traditional list runs to nine or ten vegetables and no household has all of them; what matters is the shape — batons of roughly equal size, a mix of firm and soft, and something faintly bitter. Outside Kerala, build it from what exists: potato or sweet potato for chena, green banana for plantain, chayote or courgette for snake gourd, winter melon for ash gourd, French beans and carrot for structure, and skip the drumstick rather than substituting it, since nothing else behaves like it. Frozen cut drumstick is sold in Indian groceries and is entirely adequate. If you cannot get sour curd, use plain whole-milk yoghurt left out of the fridge for 4–6 hours, or add 15 g of raw mango, which is the older souring agent for this dish and arguably the better one.
If you are watching…
Blood sugar: 15.3 g net carbohydrate per serving, and this is the one thing to understand about avial. The chena and the green plantain are starches, not vegetables — 17.5 g of available carbohydrate per 100 g each. So avial straddles two parts of the plate. Serve it as half your vegetables and count it towards a slightly smaller rice portion, or leave the plantain out entirely and net carbohydrate falls to about 11 g.
Blood pressure: 280 mg sodium, or about 210 mg with M07.
Cholesterol: 7.9 g saturated fat per serving, from 100 g of coconut across six people plus the finishing oil.
Swap it
Sour curd → 15 g raw green mango, added at step 3. The older version, sharper and cleaner, and it takes the dish from vegetarian to vegan.
Drumstick → nothing. Leave it out rather than substituting; no other vegetable contributes that resinous note.
Chena and plantain → 300 g of ash gourd, snake gourd and beans instead. Net carbohydrate falls to about 8 g per serving and the dish loses its substance and its sadya character. Worth doing for a rice-heavy meal, not for a feast.
Fewer vegetables → four is a perfectly good avial. Three is a mixed vegetable curry with ambitions.
Scale it
For twelve, cook in two pans. An avial for twelve in one vessel steams rather than simmers, and the bottom layer disintegrates before the top layer is done.
Make ahead · store · freeze
Cut the vegetables and grind the paste up to 1 day ahead, kept separately in the fridge. Fridge 3 days, and unusually for a curd dish it holds well. Freeze 1 month — safe, but the batons soften and the curd goes slightly grainy on thawing. Reheat on a low flame to just steaming, or eat it at room temperature, which is how it is eaten on a leaf.
Leftovers
Avial is the best leftover in the chapter. Mash it roughly with a fork, add a beaten egg and 20 g of rice flour, and shallow-fry as small cakes in 5 g of oil. Or thin it with 200 ml of second coconut milk into a vegetable curry for appam.
Troubleshooting
Mushy, indistinct, one texture: the vegetables went in together. The staggering in steps 2 to 4 is the entire craft of this dish.
Gluey: the paste was ground smooth. Pulse it next time and stop while it is still grainy.
Split and watery: the curd boiled. Off the heat, always.
Bland: not enough green chilli, or the raw oil and curry leaf were skipped, or it was served immediately instead of standing five minutes.
Serve with
R015 Matta Rice · R059 Sambar · R068 Kumbalanga Olan · R107 Sambharam
Tap a star to rate this recipe
