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Copyright © 2025 Foodies Only
Copyright © 2025 Foodies Only
5 min
31/10/2025
Punjabi chole is that wise owl aunt – slow-cooked, intense, and full of stories, like your dad’s old is gold playlist. Mumbai chole? It’s your younger cousin – fast, fun, and ready in minutes, like a ‘masaledar’ reel that goes viral. One’s all about tradition and depth, the other’s built for speed and snacking. Whether you're dipping bhature or scooping with kulchas, chole is that point of heated debate, where everyone secretly claims to make it best.
There are no losers when it comes to eating chole. The patient eaters who love their deeply layered dishes might love the Punjabi, slow-cooked chole. Whereas, the impatient ones whose taste buds hinge on street food from momos to golgappas, might love their chole with bhature. Both are good. But when you get into the thick of it, it all boils down to the spice profile, how the chana is prepared, and how long it is cooked. It’s convenience versus slow-cooked lore. Care to read on?
Punjabi chole is renowned for its deep, rich texture and signature dark chole, which is attained with a special trick. This trick involves soaking or cooking kabuli chana (white chickpeas) with a tea bag or dried amla to achieve its distinctive dark hue. Whole spices, such as bay leaves, black cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, cumin, coriander, fennel, and carom seeds, are dry-roasted and ground to form a fragrant masala. The curry typically incorporates anardana (pomegranate), amchur (dried mango powder), ginger-garlic paste, onions, and tomatoes, and finishes with kasuri methi.
Just like cousins in a family, Pindi and Amritsari chole are both varieties of Punjabi chole that differ slightly in taste and texture. Pindi chole is a drier version with minimal gravy, which puts emphasis on its concentrated flavours from whole spices, ghee, mustard oil, and amchur, without the use of onions or tomatoes. Preparation often includes tea leaves or a spice ‘potli’ for adding colour and more depth of flavour.
In contrast, Amritsari chole offers a slightly saucier profile, where pressure‑cooked chickpeas mingle with whole spices, onions, tomato puree, chana masala, chilli powder, anardana, amchur, tamarind pulp, and kasuri methi for a balanced and richer gravy.
Mumbai’s street-style chole finds its origins in Delhi, often served with chole bhature or chole kulche. Is chole bhature a Punjabi dish? Yes, it is, but far from its Punjabi roots, with Delhi influences and adopted by Mumbai, it keeps changing taste, colour, and flavour. Mumbai chole is lighter in its spice intensity, with a less smoky curry, that is designed to match Mumbai’s fast-paced life, and goes well with deep-fried bhaturas. Notable street joints include Chawla’s in Sion-Koliwada, where large, crunchy bhaturas and rich chole attract early queues, Manjeet Chole Puri Wala, famed for authentic Amritsari chole, and Gulati’s in Andheri East.
Beyond the obvious ingredients, what truly distinguishes each regional chole variant is how spices are layered and when they’re introduced in the cooking process. In Punjabi-style chole, the masala is typically slow-cooked to deepen the flavour, with the base built by frying onions until they are dark brown and tomatoes until the oil separates. For the pindi chole, the absence of onion and tomato means the cook relies entirely on the tempering technique – frying whole spices in ghee or mustard oil to infuse the curry with the spices without adding moisture.
Meanwhile, Mumbai-style chole often uses pre-blended chana masala boxes, which may contain dried ginger, coriander, and chilli powder. This streamlines preparation but sacrifices the complexity of the typical Punjabi chole. Punjabi chole may incorporate amchur and anardana for a layered, tangy taste, whereas Amritsari chole adds tamarind pulp for a sharper, sour taste.
Punjabi and Mumbai versions of chole mirror their communities’ social rhythms and culinary ethos. For Punjab, chole is more than just a dish – it’s a marker of hospitality, festivity, and shared meals in homes and community gatherings. Its rich flavours evoke the region’s agrarian heartland and thick family ties.
Contrasting this with Mumbai’s street-style chole, where in the throbbing lanes of khau gallis, food transcends class – people from every walk of life pause their busy pace for a quick, affordable, flavourful meal that fills their bellies and their cravings, often followed by acidic burps. Through it all, chole remains a communal staple, whether it’s a leisurely brunch in a Punjabi courtyard or a hurried bite on a Mumbai train platform.
Chole isn’t just about what’s on the plate – it’s a reflection of where you come from, how you eat, and what you value. The Punjabi version brings the wisdom of long-simmered masalas and family gatherings, while Mumbai’s style thrives on the chaos of streetside innovation. And somewhere in between lies a truth most foodies can agree on: no matter the spice mix or region, if the chana’s cooked right, it’s always home.