Dhungar: how we cook with smoke

Smoke is one of the quiet signatures of Rajasthani cooking, and many guests ask where the smoky taste in our laal maas and our bajra with smoked butter comes from. The answer is a technique called dhungar, which home cooks across the state have used for generations.

The method is simple. A small piece of charcoal is heated on an open flame until it glows red all through, which takes about five minutes. It is placed in a small steel bowl or an onion shell, set in the middle of the cooked dish. A spoonful of ghee is poured over the coal, and the moment it starts to smoke heavily, the pot is closed with a tight lid. After five to ten minutes, the lid comes off, the bowl is lifted out, and the smoke has soaked into the food.

In our kitchen, the choice of what to burn changes the flavour. Plain ghee gives a soft, buttery smoke. Ghee with a clove or two gives a sharper, spiced smoke that suits meat. For the bajra course, we smoke the butter itself in a sealed jar for 20 minutes before churning it with salt.

We also use smoke from wood. Every Wednesday morning, before service, our cooks light a small fire of babool wood in the courtyard and smoke goat legs over it for four hours for the laal maas. The smoke drifts across the garden of curry trees, and guests arriving for the 7 pm sitting sometimes catch the last of it at the gate.