Why egg is India's unsung street food hero | India News

Eggs occupy an uncertain position in Indian kitchens. They are essential for millions and consumption per capita has increased from 86 in 2019-20 to 91 in 2020-21. This is still far below the global average of 161 eggs per person per year, according to figures from the International Egg Commission (IEC). Many families still don’t eat eggs at home, and there are stories from fervently vegetarian housing complexes in places like Ahmedabad, of garbage being checked for eggshells. Eggs are also a political issue, with some state governments refusing to supply them for school mid-day meal schemes, despite their nutritional advantages. At the same time, eggs are oddly scarce in restaurants that serve meat. They tend to be restricted to breakfast menus, with few egg dishes on main menus, possibly because the margins are too low. medium93235544Eggs, an intrinsic part of street foodYet eggs rule one part of India – the street. Across the country you will find street corners where you can watch eggs being cracked, often with the one-handed ease that comes from long practice. You can hear the clash as flat metal palta (spatula) hits the tawa (griddle), scrambling eggs for bhurji or scraping off an omelette.You can smell the savoury-spicy aroma as fats meet eggs, onions and chillies. And you can eat the result which is handed to you, with its many possible textures, like softly scrambled, firmly folded omelettes, rubbery boiled egg-white and powdery yolk or the delicious messiness of a fried egg, with gloopy yolk and tender whites.There are towns, like Rishikesh, where eggs are banned, but the moment you pass city limits, the egg stalls start. Eggs are one street food you can find around the clock. Hospitals, in particular, often have egg stalls outside, to give tired and hungry medical interns a quick protein fix, or anxious relatives of patients an easy meal. medium93235616Instant noodles cooked with eggs are the carb-and-protein combination that have sustained countless exhausted workers, with egg-fried rice as the fancier option. For poor people who might want, but can’t afford meat, an occasional egg is still a protein option. Pav-bhaji might be Mumbai’s iconic snack, but omelette-pav sustains many as well, and in a healthier way.The more affluent don’t disdain street egg snacks either. Many who won’t eat it at home will still come out to get their egg fix streetside. Those who hesitate from most street foods for hygiene reasons make exceptions for eggs because they’re cooked in front of them.Even those who see street food as a form of edible entertainment are helped by the versatility of eggs. Egg World is a vendor in Udaipur which has become famous for freaky variations on egg dishes, like boiled egg bhurji wrapped in fried egg and tandoori omelettes. Last year a video of a Surat egg vendor frying eggs with Fanta freaked out the Internet, but it’s typical of what gets dreamed up at Indian street egg stalls. mediumhttps://youtu.be/dUib6BuuZT4=undefinedIndian Street Food is now making global waves. North Carolina-based Chai Pani recently won the James Beard Award for being America’s Most Outstanding Restaurant for serving “brightly flavoured nibblys and snacks served by street vendors all over India”. But it doesn’t seem to have a single egg dish on its menu.Maneet Chauhan and Jody Eddy’s engaging cookbook Chaat is subtitled Recipes from Kitchens, Markets and Railways of India. It has only three egg recipes in it, two from Goa, which seems to be India’s accepted destination for eating food you wouldn’t consider anywhere else.One is ros omelette, which is just one of the many omelette curries made in India which rarely feature in recipe books or restaurants. This omelette dunked in chicken gravy, for a complete chicken experience, is so popular in Goa that it is gaining formal acceptance. It features on some restaurant menus and an article in The Peacock Quarterly, a recently launched magazine on Goan culture, featured writer Joanna Lobo’s deep dive into ‘The Greatest Egg Dish in the World’. medium93235775Indian street food being served up around the world seems to be a mix between North Indian chaat, a few Mumbai street snacks like pav bhaji, bhel puri and vada pav, and a selection of kebabs for the meat side. The one egg dish that sometimes nudges its way on this menu is the Kejriwal, which isn’t street food, though it also comes from a liminal not-home, not-restaurant location: the club, specifically Mumbai’s Willingdon Club.The absence of eggs from Indian street food as a formal culinary category, as opposed to what Indians actually eat on the street, shows how food categories are constructed to reflect our ideas about our food and ourselves. Formal Indian street food is either firmly vegetarian or strongly meat focussed.It might appear cheap, yet features relatively upmarket ingredients (dairy, pomegranate seeds, good quality meat, more expensive spices) and deep-frying, which in its excessive use of oil answers our craving for richer tasting food.It is unusual (and cheap) enough to appeal to customers trying Indian food for the first time, while also meeting the nostalgia of Indians for the street food expeditions of their youth. Eating eggs might feature for some – for kids from vegetarian homes, an omelette is often the first experiment – but most want to be more daring, eating meat or uncooked foods, like pani puri, where an upset stomach becomes an essential part of transgressing.As against this exoticised image of Indian street food, there is actual food eaten in the streets by those who don’t have the time or means to eat it anywhere else. It includes basic dal-chawal served up by aunties from steel dabbas, puri-bhaji and regional rice dishes, like poha in western India, or idlis in south India. medium93238168Where meat features it is often the cheapest fish, increasingly farmed varieties like tilapia, or dried fish, or disregarded parts of meat, like offal. The fruits eaten are cheap, yet filling, like bananas and it makes use of vegetables that rarely feature in more prestigious settings, like the cabbage which is the basis of the curiously named, but delicious, Mumbai street food called Chinese bhel. Street food is often wilfully high-calories and unhealthy since it’s seen as an indulgence. Actual street food might also be high calories, but because those who eat it really need that source of energy. Poorer people are also far more aware of the consequences of falling sick, when they earn on a daily basis, which might explain why healthier steamed foods, like idlis and momos have become really popular across IndiaAnd this explains the ubiquity of eggs as regular street food. They are hard to beat for a quickly cooked protein boost, which is healthy since they are boiled or pan-fried rather than deep-fried. This might explain why the country which records the highest egg consumption per capita is not in the developed world.In 2021, Mexico recorded a startling 409 eggs consumed per person per year, drawing ahead of the next two highest consumers, which are Japan (337) and Columbia (334). It’s interesting to note that, with the exception of a few dishes like huevos rancheros, eggs also rarely feature in Mexican restaurants, suggesting that the divide between formal vs actual consumption is not only an Indian feature. The head of the International Egg Commission is currently an Indian, Suresh Chitturi of Telangana-based poultry company Srinivasa Farms. He’s spearheading IEC’s Vision 365, which is to get global egg consumption up to 365 per capita, or one per person every day. Perhaps the IEC could look at real Indian street food, as a way to reach that target. medium93237958Why India's next Operation Flood should be of non-bovine milkIs it time to take chicken off your menu?How the samosa became a billion-dollar snack medium93237962