As the summer intensifies, we bring to you some cooling drinks that Indians have been drinking through the ages to beat the heat. Reason enough to ditch sodas and other packaged beverages, and make a healthier choice.
This summer is turning out to be a scorcher, and the roadsides are crammed with stalls selling popular beverages, including carbonated soft drinks, that don’t do much good to our health. Traditional Indian drinks like sherbets, panna and other sweetened juices offer not just a host of health benefits, but are formulated to fortify the body when temperatures begin to soar.
Here are seven native drinks that are a healthy and tasty way to beat the heat. With a little prior preparation, you can enjoy these delicious concoctions and leave your home summer-ready.
North India is replete with these tiny red berries (Grewia asiatica) in the summertime. In most localities, you can find vendors hawking phalsa with a tell-tale tune of ‘phalsa le lo’ (take some phalsa) in baskets covered by a wet cloth. The tart berry helps with digestion and counteracts the effects of a severe heat wave. Here’s how to make the drink.
RECIPE
Ingredients:
Phalsa berries: 2 cups
Sugar: ¾ cup
Black salt: To taste
Ice: A handful
Method:
Blend the phalsa, salt and sugar in a mixer and then strain the pulp off the liquid through a muslin cloth or strainer. Add ice, or cool in the refrigerator before serving the summer drink.
Aam or mango panna is perhaps the most widely prepared summer drink across India. Raw mangoes form the base of the drink which is known as an effective antidote for a heat-stroke. With ingredients such as cumin and mint, the drink is also a digestive. You can prepare a batch and consume it for a couple of days.
RECIPE
Ingredients:
Raw mangoes – 2 whole
Water: 800 ml
Mint: 5 sprigs
Sugar: ½ cup
Cumin whole: 1 tsp
Black salt: ½ tsp
Cooking oil: 1 tsp
Method:
First, char the raw mangoes on an open flame, then skin them and boil them in water in a pressure cooker. Extract the pulp of the cooked raw mango with liquid from the vessel, and discard the mango seeds. Blend in a mixer with mint, sugar, black salt and some ice. In a tempering pan, heat a teaspoon of oil and add cumin seeds till they splutter. Add the tempered cumin seeds to the drink. Serve chilled the summer drink.
The quintessential cooling drink of this part of the world, the rose sherbet has also become a commercial staple with some popular brands marketing a concentrate of the drink. Not only is it a delicious way to beat the heat, but drinking rose sherbet can also be good for your skin. You can even use a concentrate to garnish kulfi and other Indian favourites like milk shakes and lassi.
RECIPE
Ingredients:
Rose petals: Of about 30 roses
Beetroot: 1 medium size
Tulsi leaves: 25 nos
Mint leaves: 25 nos
Coriander leaves: A handful
Sugar: 1 Kg
Small cardamom: 5-6 nos
Lemon – 4
Method:
Wash the rose petals gently in water, discard the water and dry the petals on a muslin cloth. Then boil enough water to submerge the petals, add rose petals to it, and after cooling blend this in a mixer. Filter the mixture through a sieve, and retain the resulting water in a separate container.
Next, wash, cut and blend the beetroot, tulsi leaves, coriander leaves and mint leaves. Boil this second mixture with a cup of water and cool. Sieve this mixture as well, and retain the juice. Now boil 600 gm of sugar with water and set aside for cooling. In another bowl mix the cardamom and left-over sugar, and blend into a thick paste with a little water. Set aside.
Squeeze the juice of the lemons and mix it with the sugar syrup, rose petal pulp, beetroot pulp and the sugar-cardamom mixture. Your rose drink concentrate is ready. Bottle the rose syrup and dilute with chilled water before serving the summer drink.
We love anything tangy, don’t we? The popular north Indian summer drink jal jeera embodies those very flavours that tease the taste buds with zesty and spicy undertones. Jeera translates to cumin in English, so the drink is tempered liberally with cumin, making it a great digestive.
RECIPE
Ingredients:
Fresh coriander leaves and mint leaves: A handful
Ginger: 1 tsp grated
Lemon juice: Freshly squeezed from 2 lemons
Tamarind pulp: To taste
Ground spices: Roasted cumin powder, asafetida, black salt, ground black pepper and raw mango powder (all to taste)
Sugar: To taste
White salt: To taste
Method:
In a mixie blend together the coriander leaves with mint leaves and ginger with half a cup of water. Stir in the dry ingredients into this mixture. Then dilute the paste with 3 ½ cups of water and ice. Serve chilled.
Originally a cooling summer drink from Bihar, the sattu beverage has caught on in the rest of the country because it’s an effective way to counter the effects of heat. Sattu is roasted and pounded Bengal gram flour. It is easy to procure, and the drink is easy to make besides being nutritious.
RECIPE
Ingredients:
Chilled water: 300 ml
Sattu powder: 2 tbsp
Jaggery powder: 2 tsp
Black salt: A pinch
Lemon juice: A few drops
Method:
Add the sattu powder to a glass of chilled water. The powder will tend to settle at the bottom of the glass so stir well. Then add the jaggery powder, lemon juice and black salt and give it another stir. Your beverage is ready to drink in the summer!
Bel or bael (wood apple) is plentiful in the summer months, and besides being very nutritious, it is also effective for countering a heat stroke. It’s best to make this drink from fresh fruit as opposed to buying a commercially available concentrate.
RECIPE
Ingredients:
Wood apple (bel): 1
Water: 1 litre
Ice cubes: A handful
Mint leaves: 2 sprigs
Sugar: To taste
Method:
Crack open the wood apple using a rolling pin. With a spoon, scoop out the pulp from the fruit. Now use your fingers to mash the pulp further and remove the seeds. Add water to this mixture, and stir the pulp. Filter the juice using a sieve so that the fibres of the fruit are removed. Now mix in sugar, crushed mint leaves and ice. Your summer drink is ready.
Just as aam panna and jal jeera are popular in the north of the country, people living in the western coastal belt turn to kokum (Garcinia indica) juice when the heat picks up. The drink is available in concentrate form in stores, though it’s easy to make it at home as well. According to Ayurveda, the fruit counters the pitta dosha in the body.
RECIPE
Ingredients:
Fresh kokum fruits: A handful
Sugar: To taste
Cumin powder: A pinch
Cardamom powder: A pinch
Water: 500 ml
Method:
Cut the kokum fruit into small pieces and discard the seeds. Use both the outer shell and inner pulp to prepare the pulp. Pour the fruit pulp into the mixie with some water and grind till you get a thick mixture. Meanwhile, make a sugar syrup by boiling some sugar in the required quantity of water. Let the syrup cool. Then blend together the kokum paste with sugar syrup and add the cumin and cardamom as per your taste. Your summer drink is ready. Serve chilled over crushed ice.
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The lead image on top shows fruity summer coolers. (Photo from Canva)
