For better or for worse, everyone has encountered sour fruit. Many farms pick unripe fruit to extend its shelf life, but that practice leaves us with piles of unappealing fruit in produce aisles. Whether you grabbed an icy fruit cup at an airport coffee chain, picked out a pale-as-a-Victorian-child watermelon for a last-minute picnic, or bit into a gorgeous strawberry only for it to tase your tongue, sometimes life gives us sour fruit — and frankly, it sucks.
But rather than tossing unripe fruit with sugar and baking it into a dessert, I rely on the spicy and sour flavors of chaat masala to rescue it. This powerhouse South Asian spice mix typically includes dried mango powder or amchur, dried pomegranate seeds also known as anardana, toasted cumin seeds, black pepper, pink salt, red chile powder, and asafoetida or hing.
Across the subcontinent, people shower (or if you’re me, enshroud) raw and cooked vegetables, fruit, and kebabs with chaat masala. It gets its name from the pantheon of South Asian street foods that combine crisp fried dough, fresh vegetables, yogurt, and bright chutneys. But chaat masala’s power to animate most anything is best showcased through the blank canvas of tasteless fruit.
Even before chaat masala reaches your tastebuds, you can smell its distinct scent thanks to asafetida, a gum resin from ferula, a flowering plant that belongs to the carrot family. Portuguese colonialists in India dubbed the spice “devil’s dung,” giving it a firm place in the canon of pleasantly odiferous, polarizing foods à la durian, “stinky” tofu, bleu cheese, and brussels sprouts.
The initial note of chaat masala is the acidity of dried pomegranate; a spicy sensation creeps in a moment later. Finally, you’re met with a jolt of sourness and lasting umami. You can imagine chaat masala as the Indian equivalent of tajín (much to the wrath of anyone who owns a masala dabba.)
Salting fruit lifts it to new heights, and research shows that adding salt to fruit inhibits the detection of bitterness and enhances its sweetness. In South Asia, we add chaat masala to every fruit under the sun, including bananas. Other cultures also enliven sad fruit with spice; in Mexico, for example, there’s Tajín, while in Thailand it is customary for vendors to sell fruit with pouches of chile powder and sugar. The practice of adding salty flavors to enhance the taste of fruit is enjoyed elsewhere, too, think salted cantaloupe in the Midwest, salted watermelon in the South, and MSG in salads to make fruit taste “more like itself.” Salt is the first ingredient listed on the labels of chaat masala, which is also why it shines on fried food.
So rather than wishing for the fruit on my counter to ripen magically, I add chaat masala to transform it from tart to transcendent. I’ve used it to punctuate peach and tomato gazpacho and bhelpuri, a puffed rice chaat, that I pair with unripe strawberries; paired it with pineapple pico de gallo; and, for a less fussy summer staple, used it on watermelon wedges with feta and olive oil (swapping cottage cheese for feta also works as a high-protein substitute.)
For a summery salad, I mix bland mangoes, tomatoes, and onions for a fruit chaat with chaat masala, lemon juice, roasted peanuts, and serrano chile. For a fruitier take on kachumbar salad, I’ll use insipid melons, cucumbers, mint, lemon juice, and more of the chaat masala. You can pair chaat masala and fruit for zesty marinades: my father marinates pork shoulder with blitzed peaches and chaat masala before grilling it, and I add chaat masala to Eric Kim’s pineapple chicken breast marinade. Fruits that lend well to pickling, like tomatoes and cucumbers, can also be bolstered with a mix of chaat masala, salt, and vinegar.
If you’d rather not eat sour fruit right away, chaat masala adds a punch to Padma Lakshmi’s gingery kumquat chutney. You can swap out onions for plums for a play on laccha pyaaz, or the hot pink, sweet-hot pickled onions tinged with beetroot. Quick-pickled, anemic cherries made with chaat masala, red pepper flakes, salt, vinegar, and peppercorns are an impressive addition to charcuterie boards and turkey sandwiches. The salt in chaat masala further increases the fruit’s shelf life, and its warm spices add richness to any dish.
It’s worth drinking your lousy fruit too, as blitzing unripe fruit erases its gritty or mealy texture. I puree and strain chunks of dull pineapple for the base of a tropical-inspired banta, the sparkling masala lemonade sold in Codd-neck bottles across South Asia (tequila optional, chaat masala rim mandatory.) In case you’re still craving dessert, you can also make a sweet-and-sour blackberry or mulberry sorbet inspired by kaala khatta (the tart, ink-black South Asian syrup made from Java plums) or attempt masala orange popsicles for a grown-up Freeze Pop.
While my preferred brand of chaat masala is Burlap & Barrel, Diaspora Co. and Spicewalla also make excellent versions. Indian supermarkets carry mainstay brands such as MDH and Everest, and making your own is less intimidating than it seems. The next time life hands you sour fruit, resist the urge to make jam and instead embrace the sour with chaat masala.
Mehr Singh is a food and culture reporter based in New York. Her work appears in Bon Appétit, Food52, and other publications.
Dilek Baykara is a Turkish-American illustrator, print designer, and adventurous gastronome living in Brooklyn, New York.
