Geographic Verity of Indian dishes:

Northern

North Indian cuisine is distinguished by the proportionally high use of dairy products; milk, paneer, ghee (clarified butter), and yoghurt (yogurt, yoghourt) are all common ingredients. Gravies are typically dairy-based. Other common ingredients include chilies, saffron, and nuts.
North Indian cooking features the use of the "tawa" (griddle) for baking flat breads like roti and paratha, and "tandoor" (a large and cylindrical coal-fired oven) for baking breads such as naan, and kulcha; main courses like tandoori chicken also cook in the tandoor. Other breads like puri and bhatoora, which are deep fried in oil, are also common. Goat and lamb meats are favored ingredients of many northern Indian recipes.
The samosa is a popular North Indian snack, and now commonly found in other parts of India, Central Asia and the Middle East. A common variety is filled with boiled, fried, or mashed potato. Other fillings include minced meat, cheese (paneer), mushroom (khumbi), and chick pea.
The staple food of most of North India is a variety of lentils, vegetables, and roti (wheat based bread). The varieties used and the method of preparation can vary from place to place. Popular snacks, side-dishes and drinks include mirchi bada, buknu, bhujiya, chaat, kachori, jalebi, imarti, several types of pickles (known as achar), murabba, sharbat, aam panna and aam papad. Popular sweets include mithai, such as gulab jamun, peda, petha, rewdi, gajak, bal mithai, singori, kulfi, falooda, khaja, ras malai, gulkand, and several varieties of laddu, barfi and halwa.
Some common North Indian foods such as the various kebabs and most of the meat dishes originated with Muslims’ incursions into the country. Pakistan was politically joined to North India for period prior to the partition of India. As a result, Pakistani cuisine can be grouped together with northern Indian cuisine.

Eastern

Popular Bengali sweets, such as sandesh, displayed at a shop in Kolkata.
East Indian cuisine is famous for its desserts, especially sweets such as rasagolla, chumchum, sandesh, rasabali, chhena poda, chhena gaja, and kheeri. Many of the sweet dishes now popular in Northern India initially originated in the Bengal and Orissa regions. Apart from sweets, East India cuisine offers delights of posta (poppy seeds).
Traditional Bengali cuisine is not too spicy, not too faint. General ingredients used in Bengali curries are mustard seeds, cumin seeds, black cumin, green chillies,cumin paste, mustard paste, curd, nuts, poppy seed paste and cashew paste and are preferably cooked in mustard oil. Curries are classified into bata (paste), bhaja (fries), chochchoree (less spicy vapourized curries) and jhol (thin spicy curries).These are eaten with plain boiled rice or ghonto (spiced rice). Traditional Bengali breakfast includes pantabhat (biotically degenerated boiled rice), doi-chirey, doodh-muree with fruits. Bangladesh's cuisine is very similar to that of West Bengal, corresponding to the link between Pakistani and northern Indian cuisine. Fish is relatively commonly consumed in the eastern part of India, most especially in Bengal.
Like South India, rice is the staple grain in Eastern India too. A regular meal consists of many side dishes made of vegetables. The popular vegetable dishes of Orissa are Dalma and Santula. The most popular vegetable dish of Bengal is Sukto. Deep fried, shallow fried and mashed vegetables are also very popular. Fish frequently features in a regular meal.

Southern

Idlis with coconut chutney, a well-known dish from southern India[16]
Main article: South Indian cuisine
South Indian cuisine is distinguished by a greater emphasis on rice as the staple grain, the ubiquity of sambar and rasam (also called saaru and rasa), a variety of pickles, and the liberal use of coconut and particularly coconut oil and curry leaves. The dosa, poori, idli, vada, bonda and bajji are typical South Indian favorites. These are generally consumed as breakfast. Hyderabadi biryani, a popular type of biryani, reflects the diversity of south Indian cuisine.[17]
Andhra, Chettinad, Tamil, Hyderabadi, Mangalorean, and Kerala cuisines each have distinct tastes and methods of cooking . In fact each of the South Indian states has a different way of preparing sambar; a connoisseur of South Indian food will very easily tell the difference between sambar from Kerala, sambar from Tamil cuisine, Sambar from Karnataka and pappu chaaru in Andhra cuisine.Some popular dishes include the Biriyani, Ghee Rice with meat curry, sea-food (prawns, mussels, mackerel) and paper thin Pathiris from Malabar area.

Western

Western India has three major food groups: Gujarati, Maharashtrian and Goan. Maharashtrian cuisine has mainly two sections defined by the geographical sections. The coastal regions, geographically similar to Goa depend more on rice, coconut, and fish. The hilly regions of the Western Ghats and Deccan plateau regions use groundnut in place of coconut and depend more on jowar (sorghum) and bajra (millet) as staples. Saraswat cuisine forms an important part of coastal Konkani Indian cuisine. Gujarati cuisine is predominantly vegetarian. Many Gujarati dishes have a hint of sweetness due to use of sugar or brown sugar. Goan cuisine is influenced by the Portuguese colonization of Goa.

North Eastern


The food of the North East is very different from other parts of India. This area's cuisine is more influenced by its neighbours, namely Burma and the People's Republic of China. Its use of well known Indian spices is less. Yak is a popular meat in this region of India.