How To Eat Indian Food With Your Hands 

I'm indian...and 19 yr ....and I live in india....so why I found this and watch this and watch until end 😂😂😂😂

Our first child’s pediatrician was from India. Our child got sick one night. Dr. told us to come over to her house. It was about midnight. She was cooking supper. After examining and making sure our child was OK she invited us to stay for midnight supper. We did. I learned to eat with my right hand that night. She offered me a fork, but hey....when in Rome. I love your channel!

Im a 15 yr old Indian boy, living in India. As I grew up in the UK, I was taught that eating with my hands is bad manners, and so I always ate with cutlery. Recently I have been getting a lot of comments from my relatives about the fact that I dont really look nice when I eat with my hands. So, I decided to look up how to eat nicely with hands, and this video really helped me. Thank you !!!! 😊😊😊

Thank you from my heart for sharing your culture with those who, as children, were punished for eating with our hands! 🤚😊💖

Also, when you touch/mix and eat food with your hands, the sense of touch is activated and your pallets are better prepared for the heat and texture of the food. Food definitely tastes better.

In Somalia they actually have a whole galateo on how to eat with your hands, you only eat with your right hand and only pick food with the tips of your hands and never put your fingers in your mouth but only the food, and when you eat in a shared platter you start from your side corner and work your way up to the middle, we don’t squish food and we don’t make balls with the food it’s actually considered impolite, I was born and raised in Europe but I still LOOOOVE eating with my hands even tho my family barely does

"No more making burritos out of indian food." I felt that one. :( In my defense I had no idea... but next time I shall try this method.

I’m Indian asf, why am I watching this

I’ve seen some of my friends and there parents eat like this! I think it’s so cool how different other cultures eat and cook :D

I love this video. So glad I stumbled upon this.. I am a pro in eating with my hands without making any mess but still, I loved watching it. What a graceful teacher!

Hey Urvashi , I live in HARYANA and my kids just watched your video , because they don’t know how to eat rice with their hands. Now they’re eating the Biryani without a spoon and they think it’s so much more delicious! Thank you for this wonderful video! So thoughtful! 💕

Definitely a culture shock but I enjoy watching how diverse is our world and its people, greetings from Colombia thanks for sharing

Thanks for Making video Dear Urvashi.. it's because of people like you who take Indian lifestyle to a different level

What a well done video. Your voice was loud and clear and your instructions were just right. It helped me a lot so thank you!

As Filipino, I genuinely believe that food taste better with hands.

Ughhhh i want to experience this! I want to go to an indian restaurant where everyone is eating with their hands so I can finally try it and not be judged. The food looks soooo yummy

Me a indian🥰 watching this while eating rice with my hand 🥰and thinking 😂 that ops do people really need tutorials for eating with hand 🥰 because it's a common thing for us😂

well that was interesting I always wondered about how you would go about it, thanks

This is a very brave video to make. Thank you for sharing. You make eating with ones hands look very elegant. Eating with family is fun and done with a lot of love. Each one for their own. I think it's great to eat with ones hands. But I also strongly feel that one must do what one is comfortable with. Just enjoy life. Your tutorial is very informative. Much appreciated.

18 saal se kuch nai kaya tha aaj kha liya . Thankuuu soo much for making this video 🤗

The best way to fully experience the culture of another, especially with food, is to try to do how the locals do it. Very informative video!

Great job. Thanks for sharing your cultural food. Love it

The only sophisticated and real video showing how to eat food with hands like an Indian. And, this is the only video with vegetarian food. Clean, simple, and perfect. Thanks, Urvashi. Anyone who wishes to learn this skill should watch your video.

I've always found hand-eating with roti & injera and such to be really natural... for me personally eating rice with my hands is still my final frontier. Totally my fault and all, I just feel like I'll probably need to spend some more time in India to get used to it :)

I appreciate your detailed instructions on how to eat Indian food. I'm eyeing the menu of the local Indian restaurant but my anxiety doesn't let me go there. Now I'm well equipped to try delicious food!

This is similar to how I grew up eating Mexican food with tortilla being in a Hispanic family. Using tortilla to pick up rice, beans, and protein. It just wasnt emphasized to try to use one hand and never really actually used the bare fingers are the main differenced. Very cool to see how there are similarities across cultures. Thank you for sharing. I LOVE Indian food and I make your butter chicken recipe all the time. Would it be odd to eat the dal using a spoon similar to a soup?

Ditto... It's lovely to see different cultural way of eating. And the food looks lovely.

You make me so happy with this video. I've been shown how to eat Indian food before, actually it was one dish - seasoned okra rolled in a 4" circular bread so it could have been naan, roti or chipati. My friend didn't explain she just said this is how you eat it. We were sharing an Indian food moment as I picked up my all Asian Cookbook by Jacki Passmore ($10.00). It was 1978 and I had lent her my book. We were in a ceramic class together and while chatting, as we worked, we came upon the topic of cookbooks that contain Indian food. She had never seen one with any REAL Indian recipes in it. I wanted to know how bad the recipes in my book were since I had cooked some of them and thought they were authentic so I brought the book to class for her to have a look. After she browsed through it for me she said many of them were exactly the same as her mother's recipes, recipes that she had never seen written down. She asked if she could borrow it for awhile to copy recipes. I was happy to oblige; a gift to both of us. Onevery precious moment for me and now your video adds even more to it. Thank you.

For me, the authentic way of eating any food is the best way.. different foods, different ways to eat them.

Helpful thank you so wash throughly before eating with your hand and just use the tips of your fingers. And the left hand is used to get more food and stays clean!

Thank you for this video, I’m ready to try Indian food and eat it the right way😊

I agreed..there is difference in taste when we eat the same food by hand or spoon....

I'm just getting into indian culture, I mean I'm 30 and only have about 300 Hindi words. My lady friend told me to eat with roti and shown me.. I didn't realize until now we're all hands on, even soup conforms to this, amazing. I'll remember to use my hands and set the utensils aside more next time I go to the local Indian restaurant.

Thank you for educating us.

I love eating with my hands, this was a fun video to watch

Woah, ok I'm definitely going to start eating with my hands more frequently now! Just finished dinner where I split my meal into two portions; I used utensils for the first portion and then for the second one I used only my hands. Idk what sort of sorcery is behind this but the flavor was definitely more intense and delicious when using my hands.😇

Hi thank you for this and your channel and videos. I was always fascinated by ideas. My grandmother and my aunt all do this and I never knew why?maybe, you can explain this in your videos up coming traditionally

Hello Urvasi. I loved watching this, very educated informative video. Now we know. This was so interesting, thank you so much for sharing this with all of us. Stay safe and healthy. Happy Easter and God Bless.... Claudia

Wow I never knew there is a technique for it, thank you!

Mixing food with the hand, I mean squishing it, actually improves the flavours of food. I don't know how it is with you but I have noticed it that good squished by different people have different taste. When I was small, I could differentiate between good squished by my father and that squished by my mother. Same rice, same accompaniment but different taste. And food squished by either of my parents definitely tasted better than when I used to squish the food myself.

just amazing how spectacular! my best friend Praveen loves to eat this way, great recommendation!

You're SO AWESOME Urvashi Ji!!! My father was very able to tear a piece of tortilla and grab some beans and rice with it, but our landlady(mexican-american)and me couldn't master the manner to eat with that piece of chapati(kokurucho in mexican slang), so we'd(probably learned from her), we'd make a kokurucho, grab it in our left hand and with our right hand scoop up with a fork or spoon some beans or rice, or maybe some mole or black chili, thank you for showing me and considering the nearest Indian restaurant is in Mexico City, I'll view this video many times(to absorb the technique)and therefore impress everybody there! :)

thank you. 😇😋 exactly what i read this morning . thanks

Hey, we Filipinos also use hands on our rice 😊

What happens when you run out of bread/ rice while eating your food? Do people prepare more rice/ bread in that case, or do they usually stop eating once all the carbohydrates have been consumed? Also, would it be acceptable to eat certain foods using your hands *without* the use of bread/rice, such as the cabbage and carrot dish in the video? I could imagine myself doing that if I ran out of bread/rice, in a restaurant for instance

Thanks a lot for video! Before watching it I thought that when you eat with rice ,you have to use spoon , but hand! I will definitely try right now )

I'm Arab.. We eat with our hands, spoons and forks.. Depends on the food I guess.. But I would say this.. Rice definitely tastes better when u eat it with ur hand! I wouldn't be caught dead eating biryani or machboos with a spoon lol!

I am reminded of when my family had gone to a Chinese restaurant and were eating our food with chopsticks. After a while some of us complained we were getting hand cramps because our muscles were not accustomed to holding chopsticks through and entire meal. But my son who was only about 8 and had very little practice immediately retorted he was getting a stomach cramp because he was not able to get any food into his mouth with those chopsticks! I was in the state of Gujarat for 6 months and the family I lived with mixed the rice and dal with their fingers and ate it just like Urvashi showed. I had also visited with a college student who happened to be from Rajasthan, if I remember correctly, who explained to me that food tastes differently when eaten with the fingers rather than utensils. He explained it as using all the senses to enjoy food, as well as touch and said it heightened the flavor. The family I lived with also tore the roti at the fold and just refolded the roti to move the fold when needed. It's an easy way to get a nice shaped piece of roti to pick up food with. I noticed how good Indians are at eating food with their hands, but that makes sense, right? They have always done it that way and have loads of practice. We just need to keep practicing also. It does get easier and you do get better at it. At first it feels completely unnatural and an ineffective way to eat, but after a while you get the hang of it. One thing I have noticed is posture. When we eat we are told to sit properly at the table. We bring the food to our mouths with our silverware. But Indians lean in to eat over their plate. They bring the food up and slightly inward but they meet the food there with their mouths. If you watch people eat with silverware you'll notice they may lean in, but not as much and often keep their backs straight. But oh how good it tastes! I don't know if it can be proven scientifically, but I do prefer to eat Indian food with my hands over with my silverware. For first timers I would recommend something like suki bhaji. It's a cubed potato mixture that varies by region, but since it's just boiled potato cut into cubes and then fried with seasonings it's not only super easy and tasty to make, it's also super easy to eat with roti to practice. Here is the recipe from the family I lived with. Do you also have a recipe for these potatoes? Though it might not be keto friendly....I myself don't eat them often just because Holy Carb! We used lemon juice as a substitute for mango powder I believe. *Suki bhaji* ▫ 4 medium potatoes boiled, peeled, and cubed in about 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch cubes In a pan heat: ▫ oil 1 or 2 tablespoons When oil is hot enough splutter mustard seed and cumin seeds (do not burn the cumin seeds) ▫ mustard seeds 1/3 teaspoon -1/2 teaspoon ▫ cumin seeds 1/2 teaspoon When seeds have spluttered add: ▫ 4 green chillies chopped Stir and cook for a few seconds, then add the potatoes. To that add the rest of the spices, stir often. ▫ salt 1/2-1 teaspoon or as per taste. ▫ half teaspoon sugar ▫ chilli powder 1/2 teaspoon -1 teaspoon ▫ turmeric powder -1/4 teaspoon Turn the burner off and stir in the remaining ingredients: ▫ juice of one small lemon ▫ coriander leaves (1/4th cup) for garnishing Practice eating with roti. ☺ Thank you so much for this video Urvashi. I really enjoyed it.

Honestly love looking at different ways people eat.

Thank you so much. I've heard it's better to eat with your hands as it helps with saiety

Hi, can you explain why you don't use the right index finger whilst eating?

I am Indian and have been doing this all my life. Still I am watching this just to understand what a marvellous thing I've actually been doing all my life. Eating with the hands require minute and intricate muscle coordination of the fingers which we take for granted because we have learnt it naturally. For Westerners, they have to acquire this skill after much practise.

I follow a channel where they eat this way, and western people comment so often.... I'm from Tennessee, and I eat with my fingers.... 😂 Not nearly as neatly, it must be said. Next time I find an Indian restaurant, I will gladly forego flatware. ☺

I recently started eatin food from a vegan Trinidadian restaurant. I was looking for tips on eating roti and some of the other breads they have when i found ur video. i didnt realize there was a skill to eating with my hands. Will try my skills the next time I try Indian food as well Side note: I grew up in the deep south in Georgia. As a child I remember my Grandmother teaching me to eat collards or turnin greens with my hands after mixing the greens with cornbread. Now everyone uses a fork. But I swear food tasted better with my hands!

How would you get meat off the bone using your hands?

Something wierd but the only thing I use utensils with are drinking coffee I just grab a spoon and scoop it out

Yes for us (Ethiopian) ppl to eat with our hand is normal and easy 😊❤

going for lunch and i wanted to make sure i had best manners! thank you!!

Do you have a recipe for the daal (sp?)

How exactly would I eat this kind of food when I don't have any fingers on my right hand :/? Would I be SOL?

Oh, this was really useful! I eat with my hands a lot (I really like Indian foods and medieval European foods, and medieval European foods are meant to be eaten with the hands and a knife and spoon, so a lot of the same muscle memory is used), and I've always felt like my etiquette was a bit lacking. Turns out it was, lol. Time to work on that (and eat delicious food)!

My Indian friends are cool. They accept the fact that I'm American. They even put out silverware and they always love my garlic naan...😁

Such a pleasant lady! Thank you!

My hands are disabled. I have sclerodactyly due to scleroderma. Would it be acceptable to use utensils?

Really great video. Would try it at home, but never in a restaurant. 😁

Yes etiquette but also, just enjoy food however you enjoy it. Food taste so good when you use your hand so go for it and use your hands. Also balling rice and lentils is fun, so go ahead and try it.

I’m good with sandwiches, and bread if it’s slushi texture I’m good with spoon or fork that’s just me though but I respect what other cultures do things to each there own.

I’m Latina and there is this Indian restaurant near me and I want to try cause the food looks so good but I’m kinda shy since I don’t know how to eat it 😔✌🏼

I am genuinely very messy while eating...Thanks ma'am for this video❤🙏

Wow looks incredible

I'm Hispanic and my family has eaten this way with tortillas. I've always felt like eating this way is better, and more natural

My mate’s mum from Pakistan said I eat perfectly with my hands after I watched this and then she mixed my food for me and didn’t stop smiling at me for the rest of the meal 💓 never felt so validated 😂

Thanks I was hungry from jul aug and full month finaly can eat 😁😁😁😁👍

And if you don't eat bread how you eat then ? Simply with no bread?

Very interesting!

Living next to Mexico, I got this down pat since we eat with our hands using tortillas quite often. Tearing the chapati or tortillas with one hand is a whole different story though..lol

I am English and invited to the home of Indian friends in Pune for Dilwali 12th- 14th Nov. Next weekend. This is good information but why don’t you prepare small bits of the bread before starting? It seems illogical to struggle to tear pieces off with 2 or 3 fingers? Could I do this or will it be seen as bad etiquette? I'm guessing they will not be eating while standing up when at home, right?

MY SABA IS HAVING A HARD TIME EATING BECAUSE OF YOU

i am an indian 94 year old and I eat a roti with a fork and nife . me and my belly thanks u very much. sincereley, nagasundi

How do you eat the bread Naam ? You dip it in the sauce ?

Thank u 🙏we do love indian food in germany tho. And for me, origin of my parent from middle east, its true, that we do eat withbour right hand as well, mostly make food to a ball...that works well, cause our food is dryer than urs.

Was over a friend's house, they are from Bangladesh. His wife cooked a really nice meal and served us. They forget to give me a fork and spoon. So I watched how they were doing it and started copying them. After a few minutes they apologized and brought me a fork and spoon. By then I had already seen and copied enough, I told them I didn't need it. Now a couple times/week I eat with my hands at home.

What if your left handed??

Eating with your hands is primative. The reason why forks knifes spoons was invented so we dont have to use hands. Why would anyone think having all your food over your hands and fingers is a good thing . Babies eat with there hands then we teach them to use cutlery.

i thought the taste it is in the food itself, buy hey learning something new every day.

I try at home, but I have this compulsion to keep wiping my hand clean between each handful! I then give up and eat with a spoon but tear the chapati w/ one hand.

So helpful

Very helpful! I have a question about washing hands after. When your fingers get messy from the more liquid items, how do you clean that in a restaurant in India? I figure you would end up washing your hands, but how do you get from your seat to the sink without touching anything? Napkins/towels first? Open sinks in the same room? Hands-free bathroom doors?

1st Etiquette- never eat food while standing, always be sitting

Why it's in my suggestion 😅😫😂. I searched for food recipe only 😖 ( I'm a Indian 😂)

Great video! Not to be rude or anything, maybe I'm uneducated on the subject. I'm Mexican and I eat various food with my hands as well, such as tacos, but I think the main reason they adopted that way in India is because there is a lot of poverty in a lot of regions where people don't have cutlery and it was even more expensive before, so they had no choice but to eat rice and all other foods with their hands, since eating with hands was the default, then it became the norm. Explanations to justify it come later on. Nothing wrong with that, but I don't think the reason is because they food changes flavors.

Sarap! 😊🍛🍻 Greetings from Philippines!

Her hands are so slender and pretty

Butter chicken and rice eaten with your hands really does hit different...

Love Indian food, but I think I have tactile sensory issues. I’m missing out on an experience.

using The Thumb To Guide The food Into The Mouth😂❤

What is the Hindi word for mix? Very nice video, thank you.

I would unfortunately fail at this before I even got started. I am left-handed and just would not be able to manage.

Spoons are advanced technology apparently…..geez

Beautiful hands😀 nice rings and bangles . I am an Indian still I watched this whole video just for the rings,bangles and hands.