Before You Start
Pav bhaji started out in the 1850s and 1860s as a quick lunch for Mumbai's textile mill workers. It was made from whatever vegetables were around, stretched to feed many people fast, and it has kept to that thinking ever since. Everything gets boiled and mashed into one thick curry, and bread does the scooping because bread is quicker than rice. The bhaji is less a fixed recipe than a method. Potatoes give it body, a handful of other vegetables add flavour and goodness, tomatoes and butter supply richness, and the pav bhaji masala does most of the heavy lifting.
In your own kitchen, the secret is a firm hand with the masher and a patient hand with the stove. If your bhaji still looks chunky and loose, keep cooking. It should settle into a rough, spreadable thickness.
What separates a street-stall pav bhaji from a plain home curry is mostly technique. The vegetables are mashed fine while still hot, right in the pan used for the masala. Butter goes in stages, not in one go. And a last sizzle of butter and masala is stirred through just before serving, so the top layer tastes sharper and richer than what lies beneath.
Where This Dish Comes From
Of all Indian street foods, pav bhaji has one of the better documented origin stories. Food historians such as K.T. Achaya place it in Mumbai's mill districts in the mid-19th century, where vendors sold workers a fast, filling lunch of mashed vegetable curry and bread, since they had no time for a proper sit-down meal. The pav, a soft, lightly sweet yeasted roll, reflects Portuguese influence on the city. The word comes from pão, and the habit of eating leavened bread rolls reached western Indian cooking through Goa and the Portuguese trading settlements along the Konkan coast, long before such bread was common elsewhere in India. Pav bhaji masala sold as a named, packaged blend came later, in the 20th century, but the method of boiling, mashing, cooking down with tomato and butter and serving with toasted bread was already settled on Mumbai's streets long before packaged masalas existed. The dish has since travelled across India and abroad, yet it is still most closely tied to Mumbai, where specialist stalls cook it to order on big flat tavas.
Step by Step
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Prep
Grind your own pav bhaji masala
Start with a dry pan on low heat. Tip in the coriander, cumin and fennel seeds along with the dried red chillies, cloves, peppercorns, cinnamon and black cardamom, then roast them for 2 to 3 minutes. You are listening for a warm aroma and a slightly deeper colour. Spread the spices out to cool completely before they go into the grinder, together with the amchur and chilli powder, and blitz to a fine powder. You will end up with more than one batch calls for. Seal the leftover in an airtight jar, where it holds for up to two months, and your bhaji will taste livelier than any made from an old store-bought blend.
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Prep
Cook the vegetables until very soft
Put the potatoes, cauliflower, carrot and peas in the pressure cooker with a cup of water and a pinch of salt, and cook for 3 to 4 whistles. Overcook them compared with how you would for any other dish, since a smooth mash is the whole point. Drain off the surplus water into a bowl rather than the sink, because you will need it later to loosen the bhaji. Mash the vegetables coarsely while they are still warm.
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Cook
Start the base in butter
Set a wide pan over medium heat and melt 3 tablespoons of butter in it. The onions go in next, and they need about 5 minutes to turn soft and pick up a little gold. Add the ginger-garlic paste and green chillies, and give them a minute until the raw smell disappears. Then stir in the capsicum and let it cook for another 2 minutes.
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Cook
Let the tomatoes break all the way down
Now the tomatoes go in, along with the turmeric, chilli powder and 2 tablespoons of the pav bhaji masala. Keep the heat at medium and, as the tomatoes soften, push them into the pan with the back of your spoon. Stay with it for 8 to 10 minutes, until the mixture has thickened, turned deep red and let a little oil collect around the edges. This is the stage cooks rush most, and it is the one that counts: tomato that is not fully cooked is what makes homemade bhaji taste thin and raw rather than rounded.
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Cook
Stir in the mash and simmer
Tip the mashed vegetables into the pan and pour in enough of the reserved cooking water, or plain water, to reach a thick consistency you can scoop. Aim for something looser than mashed potato, nearer to a runny curry, as it thickens while it simmers. Add salt, bring it to a simmer and cook for 12 to 15 minutes. From time to time, press the masher straight into the pan so the texture stays rough instead of turning into a puree.
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Cook
Finish with butter and more masala
Add the remaining pav bhaji masala and 2 tablespoons of butter, then simmer for a final 3 to 4 minutes. Taste, and adjust the salt, chilli and masala. What you want is a bhaji that is boldly spiced, slightly tangy from the tomato and rich, never watery. Move the pan off the heat and stir through the lemon juice.
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Cook
Griddle the pav
Cut each roll open across the middle, leaving one edge attached. Heat a griddle or wide pan, melt in a knob of butter with a pinch of pav bhaji masala, and place the rolls on it cut side down. Press gently with a spatula and wait until they turn golden with slightly crisp edges. Work in small batches, so the pan keeps its heat and the butter has no chance to burn.
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Serve
Plate it hot
Ladle the bhaji into a bowl and top it with a cube of butter to melt, then raw onion and coriander. Take it to the table with lemon wedges and the hot buttered pav, and tear off pieces of bread to scoop up the bhaji. Do not let it sit. Once it is on the plate, both the heat and the texture fade quickly.
Swaps That Work
The classic base is potato, cauliflower, peas and carrot, but any firm vegetable will work. Cabbage, beetroot (added for colour) and French beans turn up in regional versions, and you will see them more in home kitchens than at street stalls. If grinding your own masala is more than you want to take on, a good store-bought pav bhaji masala is fine, although the result tastes flatter and less fresh. No pav to be found? Toast any soft, mildly sweet dinner roll in butter, which gets you close. A crusty loaf will not, because the texture is wrong.
Turning the Heat Up or Down
Heat comes from three sources: the green chillies, the chilli powder, and the dried red chillies ground into the masala, so you have three dials to turn. To tone the bhaji down, reduce or skip the green chillies and replace part of the chilli powder with mild paprika. To push it up, stir a chopped green chilli in at the final butter stage rather than early on. Chilli added raw near the end holds a sharper, fresher bite than chilli cooked from the beginning.
Where Cooks Often Slip
Undercooked tomatoes are the usual problem. They leave the bhaji sour and thin, so wait until the tomato-masala mix has visibly darkened and oil has separated before the vegetables go in. The second slip is boiling the vegetables in too little water and then having no liquid to loosen the bhaji later, so keep the cooking water instead of draining all of it away. Third, going light on butter. Pav bhaji is supposed to be rich, and cutting the butter hard changes both texture and the balance of flavours the dish depends on.
Keeping and Warming Up Leftovers
To keep it: Keep leftover bhaji in a lidded container in the fridge for up to 3 days, and expect the flavour to round out a little overnight as the spices settle. You can also freeze it for up to a month in a sealed container; defrost it in the fridge before warming it up. Griddled, buttered pav does not keep, so make it fresh each time. Plain pav rolls are fine at room temperature for a day or two, as with any soft bread.
To warm it up: Put the bhaji in a pan over medium-low heat with a splash of water to loosen it, and stir often until it is steaming hot all the way through. Finish with a small knob of butter to bring back some of the richness that storage takes away. Go easy on the microwave, since a shallow dish can scorch at the edges; short bursts with a stir between them work better. When it is time to eat, toast fresh pav in place of reheating rolls that were already toasted once, as those turn tough.
Kitchen Safety Note
The bhaji is fully cooked and keeps safely like any cooked vegetable curry. Cool it within about two hours of cooking instead of leaving it out, and chill it in a shallow, sealed container so it cools quickly and evenly. Potatoes make up a large part of the dish, so do not leave the finished bhaji at room temperature for long, especially in warm weather, and reheat it until steaming hot, not merely lukewarm, before serving. If you toast pav in dairy butter instead of a shelf-stable spread, do not leave the butter out unrefrigerated for long stretches.
References and More to Read
- K.T. Achaya, "Indian Food: A Historical Companion" (Oxford University Press) — on the mid-19th century origins of pav bhaji among Mumbai's mill workers.
- Lizzie Collingham, "Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors" (Oxford University Press) — on the Portuguese-Goan origins of pav bread in western India.