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EveryCow

Milk drinks

Lassi

Curd churned with water and sugar or salt into a thick, frothy drink, served in tall glasses or clay cups across the Punjab.

Lassi is curd whisked or churned with water until it froths, then sweetened with sugar or seasoned with salt and roasted cumin. It comes from the Punjab, on both sides of the border, and is drunk with meals and against the summer heat. Sweet lassi is often crowned with a slab of malai; salted lassi is thinner and sharper.

What goes in

Set curd: 57%57%Cold water or milk: 21%21%Sugar or salt: 7%Malai: 7%Roasted cumin: 7%5parts
  • Set curd857%, Thick and only mildly sour.
  • Cold water or milk321%, Thins it to a drinkable pour.
  • Sugar or salt17%, Sweet or salted style.
  • Malai17%, Spooned on top of sweet lassi.
  • Roasted cumin17%, For the salted kind.

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: Set Set whole milk as curd and chill it.
  2. Step 2: Churn Whisk or churn the curd with cold water and sugar or salt until it froths.
  3. Step 3: Serve Pour it into a tall glass or a clay kulhad.
  4. Step 4: Serve Top sweet lassi with malai, or salted lassi with roasted cumin.
  5. Set curd: 57%57%Cold water or milk: 21%21%Sugar or salt: 7%Malai: 7%Roasted cumin: 7%
    Finished Lassi, by share.

Punjabi summer

In Punjabi villages lassi was once the main drink of the working day, carried to the fields in brass pots and drunk with a midday meal of rotis and butter. Cities like Amritsar and Lahore are known for lassi shops that serve it in tall steel tumblers or kulhads, unglazed clay cups that are thrown away after use. The thicker the lassi, the better it is thought to be.

Variations

The plain sweet and salted lassi are the base. Some shops add rose water, cardamom or saffron, and fruit lassis made with mango are common across India. Varanasi serves lassi thick enough to eat with a spoon, topped with malai and sometimes rabri. Lassi is also the general Punjabi word for buttermilk left after churning, which is thinner and closer to chaas.

Where it is used

Summer drinkWith Punjabi breakfastRoadside lassi shops

The breeds behind it

SahiwalNamed after Sahiwal in the Pakistani Punjab.HarianaDual-purpose breed of the eastern Punjab plains.Red SindhiDairy zebu widely kept in the Punjab and Sindh.

Also part of it, and being written: Cholistani cattle (Desert breed of southern Punjab in Pakistan.).

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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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