Shravan Fasting Food: 5 Different Types Of

Fasting-Friendly Flours

Used In Upvas Recipes

Quick Summary

Vrat food often gets a bad reputation for being repetitive or bland, simply because the ingredient list shrinks so drastically and regular wheat, rice, and refined maida are all off the table during Shravan. But a handful of fasting-friendly flours can change that, lending vrat dishes far more flavour and variety than they usually get credit for!  Some of these flours are: Rajgira (amaranth), kuttu (buckwheat), singhara (water chestnut), samak rice, and sabudana (tapioca) flour. Each of these flours has distinct properties, especially when made into dough or batter. The way they bind, fry, and thicken is different, and knowing which does what will make your Shravan fasting food turn out delicious.

Deep Dive

During Shravan, regular cereal grains like wheat, rice, and lentils are set aside in favour of a small group of non-cereal flours that fasting traditions classify as permissible. This is the reason Shravan's fasting food looks so different from that of an everyday kitchen. Instead of atta and maida, the flour used during vrat consists of rajgira, kuttu, singhara, samak rice, and sabudana flour, each ground from plants that are not classified as true cereal grasses. Table salt is also replaced with sendha namak, and onion and garlic are left out, but the flour swap is what most changes the texture, binding, and cooking method.

1. Rajgira (Amaranth) Flour

Rajgira flour, ground from amaranth seeds, is one of the most protein-dense options on this list and carries a complete essential amino acid profile, including lysine, which most Indian cereal flours lack. It's gluten-free, which means it won't stretch or puff the way wheat flour dough does. Most rajgira flour recipes use this property to their advantage, adding boiled, mashed potato as a binder before making parathas or pooris from the dough. 

Flatbreads are one aspect; rajgira flour can also be cooked into a thick porridge or kheer, since its starch thickens quickly without needing a separate binding agent. It is also used to make simple ladoos with a sticky mass of jaggery. 

• Best for: Parathas, pooris, halwa, kheer, ladoos, thalipeeth

• Properties: High protein, needs an added binder (usually potato) for dough

2. Kuttu (Buckwheat) Flour

Kuttu, or buckwheat flour, is a pseudo-cereal rather than a true grain, which is why it's permitted during fasting, whether for shravan or navratri. What makes it the GOAT is that it can be used to make many fasting snacks or any upvas recipe, because it behaves somewhat like cereal flour in the kitchen. It has notably higher protein and fibre content than the other flours on this list, along with rutin, a flavonoid antioxidant not found at the same concentration elsewhere. 

When kneaded into a dough, kuttu, like rajgira, needs a binder, like mashed potato and rock salt rather than water alone, since it lacks the gluten that wheat flour or even rice flour has, which is the elastic component of the flour. This combination is what makes kuttu ki puri turn out like the regular flour puris, and not splinter or crack during frying. A kuttu atta recipe can also be stretched to make steamed dhoklas and cheelas, since the batter thickens once steamed or cooked in a pan.

• Best for: Pooris, parathas, dhokla, cheela

• Properties: Highest protein and fibre among common vrat flours

3. Singhara (Water Chestnut) Flour

Singhara atta is made from dried and ground water chestnuts, which are a late autumn to winter produce, but for monsoon fasting, it is turned into atta. It has a milder, slightly sweet flavour compared to kuttu or rajgira and has an excellent binding quality that makes it especially suited to fritters and pakoras that need cohesion. A typical singhara atta vrat recipe leans on this binding strength directly, without needing egg or a separate starch element, which is part of why it’s a common choice for halwa and kheer as well, where it sets into a firm, sliceable texture as it cools.

• Best for: Pakoras, halwa, kheer, uttapam

• Properties: Strong natural binding, mild sweet flavour

4. Samak Rice Flour

Samak, or barnyard millet, is often called ‘fasting rice’, which is why it is often used to make rice khidhdis, as it's used in place of the starchy rice during Shravan, when the usual cereal grains are avoided. Ground into flour, it's easy to digest and works well in both khichdi-style preparations and steamed dishes like idli, since it fluffs up like semolina once cooked. Samak rice flour doesn't bind on its own the way singhara does, so it's paired with a starch or vegetable base rather than used as a standalone dough.

• Best for: Khichdi, idli, pulao, cutlets

• Properties: Light, fluffy texture; needs pairing with a binder or starch

5. Sabudana (Tapioca) Flour

The stickiest flour in this list, which is perfect for making any Shravan fasting food, is sabudana flour, which is known as tapioca flour elsewhere. Sabudana, commonly sold as tapioca pearls, is made from starch extracted from the cassava root, and most of India's commercial sabudana today comes from tapioca rather than the sago palm it's named after. Once ground into flour, it develops a sticky, cohesive texture when cooked, which functions almost like a binding agent even without any actual gluten protein.

This is why sabudana flour shows up less as a standalone dough and more as a binder mixed into other batters of fasting snacks and dishes. It is added to doughs to make thalipeeth, vrat-friendly cutlets, and kachori dough, specifically to bind them, and is often used as a substitute for a portion of rajgira or singhara flour when a recipe needs that extra stickiness. Beyond binding, tapioca pearl recipes feature sabudana dishes such as sabudana khichdi, sabudana kheer, sabudana papad, and a wide range of sabudana snacks that don't need flour at all.

• Best for: Binding thalipeeth, cutlets, kachori dough; whole pearls for khichdi and kheer

• Properties: Sticky texture, best used as a binder rather than a primary flour

The Fasting Flours at a Glance

Combining these Flours for Delicious Sawan Dishes

None of these sabudana dishes or flour-based recipes should be restricted from use in isolation. A common fix across Shravan fasting food is blending flours to compensate for each flour’s weakness:

• Add a spoon of sabudana flour to a rajgira or kuttu dough that's falling apart, since its stickiness compensates for the other two's lack of binding.

• Use singhara atta in a batter that also contains samak rice flour, letting singhara's natural binding hold the lighter samak texture together.

• Keep whole sabudana pearls (rather than the flour) for kheer and khichdi, and reserve the ground flour specifically for binding fried snacks.

This kind of practical pairing is what turns a single-flour dish into a more reliable, less crumbly one, particularly for fried upvas food ideas like cutlets and flaky kachori, where a weak dough falls apart in hot oil.

Sprucing Up Shravan Vrat Recipes

Shravan runs for a full month, and most households rotate through the same handful of flours across four or five fasting Mondays. Knowing which flour gives a better binding, which one is better suited for frying, and which one thickens on its own means fewer failed batches of pooris or cutlets that fall apart mid-fry, which might seem like a small feat, but given the dearth of time, it’s a useful thing to know for anyone cooking Shravan vrat recipes regularly rather than once a year.