On the trail of the Shegaon Kachori

Chronicling the history of a Rajasthani snack with a version at Maharashtra

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In the past few years, Shegaon kachoris started appearing at tea and snack shops across Thane. Like other viral food trends, Shegaon kachoris are here to stay with newer shops selling this flat piece of fried dough every month.

No company has a trademark on Shegaon kachoris, so we cannot ascertain the origin of what we are buying at Thane though with that name. One member of the family that started the Shegaon kachori does sell frozen kachoris with long shelf life and has been supplying outside Shegaon. So some of Shegaon kachoris at Thane reached the city frozen, which sellers fry and offer.

Shegaon Kachoris have an interesting story. After India's independence and migration of people into and within India, Tirtharam Sharma moved from Punjab and settled at Shegaon. In 1950, he started making and selling Kachoris at his Shegaon railway station stall, and his snack soon became popular with train passengers. In those days, the price of the Shegaon kachori was only 2 paise.

People would alight at Shegaon to buy and eat the kachori, and the snack gained fame like the batata wada at Karjat and the onion wada at Maddur (near Mysuru) railway stations. The Indian Railways have a long and intimate association with Indian cuisine. The Shegaon kachori is one of the many dishes that originated at a railway station to become famous.

The Shegaon kachori at ten rupees is cheap, and that is one reason for its widespread popularity. Unlike the regular kachoris, it is flat and does not have a puffed appearance. You can search for Shegaon kachori recipes and find many on the world wide web, but the founding family's third generation, which makes the dish now, does not reveal the original's recipe.

Shegaon kachori's variation over traditional Rajasthani moong dal kachori is that the former has besan or chickpea flour. Shegaon kachori also has spices, green chilies, garlic, ginger, and coriander leaves in a secret proportion adding to the famous dish's mystique.

The third generation of the founder now sells Shegaon kachoris with his grandson Anil Sharma making nearly a thousand of them daily for sale at Shegaon. The fourth generation of the founder, Karan Sharma and Lohit Sharma, is also active in the family business. They have introduced innovations like the vegetable kachori, cheese kachori, and a Jain version. In keeping with the times, the Shegaon kachori center now also sells sandwiches to cater to tourists from different cities where that dish is popular.

Many devotees visit Shegaon for its famous Sant Gajanan Maharaj samadhi shrine for more than one century. Since 1950, the Shegaon kachori is an attraction to Shegaon's visitors who partake of it while there.

When you buy it at Thane's stores, you get the kachori, pickled green chili, and green chutney. Shegaon kachoris are light snacks, and Anil Sharma's cousin, Gagan Sharma, claims that you can easily eat four or five of them without feeling heavy. I have not tried that, though, so you will have to independently verify such a claim by binge eating Shegaon kachoris.

Gagan Sharma was selling kachoris at Shegaon for six rupees some years ago, and he supplies them to outlets at Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Silvassa. Gagan sells frozen kachoris that you can store for three months, and those are the ones you get when you buy at Thane.

Many families now make kachoris at Shegaon apart from the Sharma family associated with the famous Shegaon kachoris.

Kachoris are an Indian dish and one of the two most popular Indian dishes, the other being the Samosa. Samosas, though, originated in middle East Asia, whereas Kachoris are originally from Rajasthan. In India, Kachoris are popular across Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal.

Rajasthan is famous for its onion and moong dal kachoris. Though Jodhpur is famous for its kachoris, you can also find them at every Rajasthani city, including Jaipur, Kota, Udaipur, and Jaisalmer.

When I traveled in that state, my hosts would invariably claim their city had a famous version of the kachori and would take me to the nearest shop which sold it. Rajasthani shops sell kachori with green chilies and spicy and sour chutneys.

Kachoris are the most popular street food of Rajasthan, and you will find people eating them any time of the day. The refined flour (maida) in Rajasthani kachoris develops into flaky layers in the fried snack. Rajasthan has a mawa kachori which is a sweet version and resembling a European pastry. The Shegaon kachori is similar to Bikaner's Mogar kachori.

Unlike samosas with non-vegetarian filing versions, kachoris have only vegetarian versions with some spicy, others sweet, and a few tarts. Some kachoris have whole wheat flour (atta) instead of maida. It is also common in north India and West Bengal to serve kachoris with vegetable side dishes.

Bihar and Gujarat also have their own versions of kachoris. Kachoris are a versatile food that lends themselves to innovation as they take any filling, including vegetables and pulses. You can eat kachoris without any garnish or have them with side dishes for a mini-meal.

I have found kachoris very filling, so if you have them at the start of the meal, you may not be able to eat much else later. At Thane, popular snack shop Raghav Corner now has three kachoris, the onion one, the moong dal one, and the Shegaon kachori, to cater to consumer tastes.

Raghav is a clean and hygienic store where you can savor the Shegaon kachori in an air-conditioned ambiance.

Google Maps recognizes the popularity of Shegaon kachoris, and you can find a store near you that sells the snack by searching for "Shegaon kachori near me!"