Tawang, a winter morning: before the day’s work begins, a Monpa family eats a thick porridge of finger millet and greens. It is as good a place as any to begin understanding the food of the north-east
In Tawang, high in the mountains of western Arunachal Pradesh, the mornings in winter are cold enough to make you want something hot and heavy before you step outside.
In many Monpa homes, that something is zan.
Water is brought to the boil with a pinch of salt. Finger millet flour, the grain much of India knows as ragi, is stirred in until it thickens into a dense, dark porridge. Greens and vegetables go in with it. That is almost all there is to it. It is eaten in the morning, before people go out to work in the fields or the town, and it keeps them full for hours.
If you have grown up on poha or idli or paratha, it may look plain. But a bowl of zan is a good door into one of India’s least-known kitchens.
If you have grown up on poha or idli or paratha, it may look plain. But it is a good door into one of India’s least-known kitchens.
Why millet
Start with the grain. Across most of the north-east, the staple is rice, grown in the river valleys and on terraced hillsides. But Tawang is high country, with long, hard winters. Millets grow where rice struggles, and in Arunachal Pradesh they have been grown for generations. A study of the state’s tribal recipes found eleven different millet dishes among the Adi, Nyishi, Apatani, Idu Mishmi and Monpa. Finger millet was the most common grain of all.
That is the first thing zan teaches you about the north-eastern plate. It is shaped, very closely, by the land. What grows here is what gets eaten here.
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What goes beside it
Zan is rarely eaten alone. The Monpa, who live in some of the highest inhabited places in the state, serve it with whatever the mountains provide: fermented soybeans, pork, vegetables, and cheese.
The cheese is a clue to where you are. The Monpa keep yaks. From yak milk they make butter, which they call mar, and a soft cheese called churpi. They dry yak meat to last through the winter. Their food, like their Buddhism, their monasteries and their language, belongs to the high Himalayan world that stretches west into Bhutan and north into Tibet.
The cheese is a clue to where you are: the high Himalayan world of yaks, monasteries and long winters.
Less oil, more flame
The second thing zan teaches you is how the north-east cooks. Traditionally, the Monpa do not even roast the flour in ghee before making it. Across much of the region, cooks use little oil and hardly any packaged spice mixes. Food is boiled, steamed, smoked over the fire, or cooked inside bamboo. The flavour comes from fresh herbs, from chillies, and, above all, from fermentation.
That is the third lesson, and it runs through the whole region. The soybeans served beside zan are fermented. So is the bamboo shoot that turns up in kitchens from Assam to Mizoram, soured for weeks in jars. So is the ngari, the small fish sealed in clay pots for six months, that Manipuris mash into their eromba every day. For people who live far from markets, through long monsoons and long winters, fermenting was how you made food last. Over centuries it also became how food tasted like home.
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Many plates
It is worth saying clearly: there is no single north-eastern plate. There are eight states, more than two hundred communities, and kitchens as different from each other as Kerala’s is from Punjab’s.
A Naga family may sit down to smoked pork slow-cooked with bamboo shoot and fiery chillies. A Manipuri family eats rice with eromba. An Assamese thali will have fish, greens and something sour. A Monpa family in Tawang has its bowl of zan and a cup of butter tea. What they share is not a recipe, but a way of thinking: cook what the land gives you, waste nothing, let time and fire and fermentation do the work, and keep it simple.
The bowl
Millets are fashionable again in the rest of India. Health food shops sell ragi cookies and millet muesli, and menus proudly advertise ancient grains.
In Tawang, nobody needed to rediscover them. On a cold morning, before work, the family eats its zan, as their grandparents did, not because it is fashionable, but because it is warm, it is filling, and it is what grows here. For a curious Indian wondering where to begin with the food of the north-east, that is not a bad place to start: one plain, dark, hearty bowl, and everything it tells you about the land around it.
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If you think you have remembered everything about this topic take this QUIZ
Results
#1. Which specific tribe from the high mountains of Arunachal Pradesh is famous for making Zan porridge?
#2. What is the primary ancient grain used to make the flour for this porridge?
#3. What is the first step a traditional cook takes when preparing the flour for Zan?
#4. What is ‘churpi’, an ingredient often added to the porridge for extra flavor?
#5. Why is this dish considered ideal for farmers and herders who perform heavy physical labor?
#6. Which side dish is traditionally served with the porridge to provide internal warmth?
#7. What environmental benefit of growing finger millet is mentioned in the text?
#8. According to the “Quick Comparison Table,” how does the energy release of Zan compare to modern cereal?
What exactly is the main ingredient of this traditional dish?
The primary ingredient is finger millet flour which is locally grown in the hills and known for its incredibly high nutritional value.
Is this porridge supposed to be sweet or savory?
While you can add milk and sugar it is traditionally eaten as a savory meal cooked with local green vegetables, salt and sometimes fermented cheese.
Who traditionally eats this meal?
It is the staple daily breakfast of the Monpa tribe who live in the high altitude districts of Arunachal Pradesh.
Can I make this dish at home easily?
Yes it is very simple to make. You just need to roast some ragi flour and slowly whisk it into boiling water until it forms a smooth thick paste.
Why is this meal so good for heavy physical work?
The complex carbohydrates in the flour break down very slowly in the stomach providing steady long lasting energy for people who walk up steep mountains all day.
Sources & References
Journal of Drug Research in Ayurvedic Sciences, “Traditional and common millet-based food recipes of the tribal communities of Arunachal Pradesh” (2023) — the eleven millet recipes, zan as a Monpa staple breakfast, and Monpa yak products.
Journal of Ethnic Foods, “Millets in India: exploring historical significance, cultural heritage and ethnic foods” (2025) — zan as the best-known Monpa porridge.
R. K. Singh, A. Singh and A. K. Sureja, “Traditional Foods of Monpa Tribe of West Kameng, Arunachal Pradesh,” Indian Journal of Traditional Knowledge 6(1) (2007) — Monpa food traditions.
Archana’s Kitchen, “Arunachal Pradesh Zan Recipe” (2017) — the traditional preparation without ghee and the region’s cooking methods.
