What is Chutney, Where Does it Come From and What Are The Main Types of It?

With all the cooking shows on television today, you have surely heard of chutney: it is a preparation originally from Asia, specifically typical of India, which has increasingly established itself in Western kitchens and has become one of the most loved preparations by chefs all over the world.

It is often confused with jam and marmalade because it can also be fruit-based, but in reality chutney is a different preparation because it is not a preserve but a real accompanying sauce. Easy to prepare at home, achievable with a wide variety of ingredients (from fruit to vegetables), chutney with its sweet and sour taste can give a unique boost of flavor to your dishes. Here is everything you need to know to prepare and use it.

What is Chutney?

Chutney is a sweet and sour sauce with a base that can be made of fruit, vegetables or even greens, cooked in pieces with sugar, and a wide range of spices and herbs such as ginger, cumin, chili and coriander that create a preparation with an aromatic and pungent flavor. The sauce has spread with its “English” name but seems to derive from the Sanskrit term chatni (very spicy) and the Hindi word chaatna (lick, taste).

The British are responsible for the spread of chutney: starting from the 17th century and throughout the colonial period, they imported various local recipes from India, such as curry, transforming them into a more delicate version of the original to adapt it to English tastes. For this reason, today chutney is particularly widespread and used in British countries and, in general, those of Anglo-Saxon culture.

From Great Britain, chutney has become increasingly widespread, so much so that it has become a common preparation in restaurants all over the world and is also easy to find ready-made in supermarkets, where it is often confused with our mustard even though they are different compounds.

Types of Chutney

One of the aspects that has made chutney so popular is the possibility of customizing it to your own taste: starting from the basic recipe, therefore the union between spices and fruit or vegetables, you can create the sauce with practically any combination that meets your taste. Furthermore, you can also decide whether to prepare the chutney raw, therefore without cooking the ingredients but only marinating them, or cooked as if it were a jam, and you can also decide whether to obtain it more liquid or denser.

Precisely because of this ease in combining it to your own preference, it is very difficult to establish a single recipe for chutney, especially in India where the sauce is even prepared with different bases that vary from yogurt to vinegar, from lemon juice to sugar. In general, two types of chutney are distinguished, the sweeter one and the saltier one, even if the taste generally always tends towards sweet and sour and spicy.

In India the most popular and used chutney is the one made with mango, which in turn is divided into different variants based on the ingredients used to make it: avakkai is the classic mango chutney, made from a mix of mango, ginger, coconut, red chilli and parsley; chunda is sweeter and the mango is cooked with ginger, sugar, salt, red pepper, garam masala and lime juice; thuvial is made from green mango worked with onion, toasted chilli peppers, coconut, coriander, mustard seeds and chickpeas (or dried yellow peas) sautéed in a pan.

Coconut chutney is also widely used: the most popular and loved version is the particular gole ki chutney, made with ground coconut pulp, green chillies and coriander and with a delicate but slightly bitter flavor. In short, the world of chutney is a real world, which has expanded even more with the arrival of the recipe in the West: as you will have understood, you can prepare chutney with any type of fruit or vegetable that, starting from the basic recipe and respecting the balance of flavors, you can combine with a very wide variety of ingredients.

Among the most popular Western variations, try apple chutney, a very creamy sauce with a fragrant and pleasantly spicy flavor, ideal for accompanying meat-based second courses such as roasts and boiled meats or cheese platters; tomato chutney, so tasty that it is also delicious spread on a slice of toast; and onion chutney, ideal for accompanying meat-based second courses, roasts and fresh or mature cheeses.

How to Use Chutney in Cooking

In India, chutney is mainly used to accompany dishes that have a weak flavor, such as plain rice, or to make recipes with a dry consistency creamier, such as stewed meat; however, it is a compound that is used on almost every occasion and is also used with fish or vegetable dishes.

Chutney is also used with meat, but its main use is usually with cheese platters, next to or instead of honey and jams. Thanks to its refined combination of sweetness and acidity, chutney is also very good on its own, spread on a slice of bread, paired with tartare and paired with fish, especially shellfish.