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EveryCow

Milk drinks

Chaas (spiced buttermilk)

Thin buttermilk seasoned with salt, cumin, ginger and herbs, drunk with lunch across western and southern India.

Chaas is the buttermilk left after butter is churned from curd, or curd thinned heavily with water. It is salted and flavoured with roasted cumin, ginger, green chilli, coriander or curry leaves. Gujarat drinks it with nearly every lunch. In Tamil it is mor, in Kannada majjige and in Marathi taak, each with its own seasoning.

What goes in

Buttermilk or curd: 40%40%Water: 40%40%Salt and roasted cumin: 7%Ginger and green chilli: 7%Coriander or curry leaves: 7%5parts
  • Buttermilk or curd640%, What remains after churning butter.
  • Water640%, Makes it thin and light.
  • Salt and roasted cumin17%, The basic seasoning.
  • Ginger and green chilli17%, Crushed in.
  • Coriander or curry leaves17%, Fresh herbs or a tempering.

Rough parts by weight. The ring shows each input's share of the product.

Made step by step

Each drawing shows the operation for that step. Quantities and timings differ from house to house and herd to herd; this is one traditional way, in outline.

  1. Step 1: Churn Churn set curd until the butter separates and lift the butter out.
  2. Step 2: Serve Thin the remaining buttermilk with cold water.
  3. Step 3: Serve Stir in salt, roasted cumin, crushed ginger and chilli.
  4. Step 4: Cook In the South, pour over a hot tempering of mustard seed and curry leaves.
  5. Step 5: Serve Serve cool with lunch or by the glass in the afternoon heat.
  6. Buttermilk or curd: 40%40%Water: 40%40%Salt and roasted cumin: 7%Ginger and green chilli: 7%Coriander or curry leaves: 7%
    Finished Chaas (spiced buttermilk), by share.

A meal in Gujarat

A Gujarati thali is often finished with a glass of chaas, and farm families drink it through the day in the dry season. Kathiawar and Kutch, the home tracts of the Gir and Kankrej breeds, have long dairy traditions in which buttermilk was shared freely with neighbours and passers by, since it was what was left once the butter had been taken.

Neer mor in the South

In Tamil Nadu, neer mor, water buttermilk, is tempered with mustard seed, curry leaves and asafoetida. In the hot months, temples, shops and families set up water stalls called thanneer pandal by the roadside and pour free buttermilk for anyone passing. Kerala's sambharam and Karnataka's majjige are close relations, and a seasoned buttermilk often closes a South Indian meal.

Where it is used

With lunchSummer water stallsField drink

The breeds behind it

GirDairy breed of the Gir hills of Saurashtra.KankrejBreed of north Gujarat and the Rann of Kutch.TharparkarMilk breed of the Thar desert.KangayamTamil Nadu breed of the Kongu country.

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Sources and further reading

About this page

Original text and drawings by the EveryCow desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. The shares are a rough, illustrative ratio, not a recipe: every family and dairy makes it differently. If we have something wrong, tell us.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

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