Buttermilk thinned with water, tempered with roasted cumin, ginger, curry leaves, coriander. Gujarati lunch — thinner than ayran, salt-savoury not sweet.
Gujarati farmhouse tradition: after churning butter from buffalo dahi, the leftover thin liquid (the actual definition of buttermilk) was salted and seasoned, drunk with thaali at lunch. Codified in Jain Gujarati cookbooks from 18th-century Surat as the everyday hot-climate digestive.
Ahmedabad's Gopi Dining Hall has poured chaas free with their unlimited Gujarati thaali since 1969. Restaurant chains like Rajdhani serve it in copper kalash. Mumbai's Soam in Babulnath does a charcoal-smoked chaas with a piece of glowing coal dropped into ghee for 30 seconds.
Pale milk-white, watery — you can see through a thin glass — served at room temperature or just-cool, never iced. Yogurt-tang light, salt mid, cumin smoke, ginger heat at the end, curry-leaf perfume floating. Drunk in three gulps between thaali bites.
Real chaas needs the thin liquid left after churning butter from yogurt — modern shortcut is yogurt:water at 1:3, but it lacks the lactic complexity. Tempering (vaghaar) of mustard seeds, hing, curry leaves in 1 tsp ghee is poured into chaas just before serving — hot-into-cold gives the aroma snap.
Variations
Gujarati Surti (vaghaar with hing, ginger, green chili); Marathi taak (lighter tempering, no curry leaves); Sindhi (heavier salt, dried mint); Rajasthani (asafoetida-forward, sometimes thickened); Punjabi lassi-chaas hybrid (thicker, no tempering).
On the Palate
Where Chaas sits in the Indian flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 4
How it's made
3 steps · 5 min
- 12 min
Whisk 500 ml plain yogurt with 750 ml cold water until smooth.
Watch outWhisk until it's uniformly thin and frothy with no yogurt lumps — chaas should pour like milk, not cling.
- 22 min
Add 1/2 tsp salt + 1/2 tsp cumin + 1 tsp chopped ginger + chopped cilantro.
Watch outToast the cumin first, then crush — raw ground cumin tastes flat and grassy against the cold yogurt.
- 31 min
Stir thoroughly; pour over ice; serve cold.
