From Makhana to Truffle Masala: My New Indian Snack Obsession

From chocolate boondi to truffle peanuts and fizzy jal jeera, familiar flavors are finding clever new forms.

For years, I have walked past enormous transparent bags of makhana at Indian grocery stores without buying them. I knew what they were: those pale, puffy water lily seeds that look a little like popcorn. I knew they were supposed to be good for me. Still, a giant bag of plain makhana never tempted me.

Instead, a trip to the Indian grocery often ends with me adding masala banana chips, black pepper cashews, chakli, and biscuits, to my shopping cart. Indian snacks are my weakness because they are tied to memory. One bite can take me back to after-school treats, long train journeys, and evening chai. For years, I have filled my grocery cart with nostalgia every time I went to an Indian store.

At home, I grew up in a heavy snacking culture. Every afternoon, my family gathered for tea and snacks –sometimes store-bought fresh samosas or homemade pakoras. When there wasn’t anything else at hand, we tore into a packet of Parle-G biscuits or masala chips.

Now, I don’t have a designated snack time and no community to share them with every day. I snack while watching movies and sports, sometimes in bed. Around three in the afternoon, I start looking for something crunchy to go with my chai. I munch on namkeens and Punjabi mixes while waiting for dinner to cook.

Indian Snacks For the Immigrant Palate

Over time, I have discovered a new generation of South Asian American food entrepreneurs who are finding their way into my pantry. They are taking familiar ingredients like and flavors — makhana, boondi, millet; and flavors like masala, cardamom, jal jeera; and combining them with chocolate, truffles, sparkling water and other ideas from the American snack aisle. These snacks are often served in smaller portions, and are made with cleaner ingredients and fewer preservatives. Most of all, these new discoveries keep the binge interesting for me.

AshaPops: The Makhana I Finally Learned to Love

It finally took Asha Pops, a company from Los Angeles to get me to buy makhana. The company was started by the mother-and-son team of Asha and Jai Farswani. Asha grew up eating makhana in India and later made the snack for her son. Jai once pulled out a bag of his mother’s makhana during a business meeting and shared it around the table, and the rest is history.

When I first tried AshaPops, I loved the crunchiness of each pop and the delicate, familiar turmeric flavor. It became a substitute for my popcorn binges. Besides the health benefits, it came without the risk of chipping my tooth on a kernel.

The ingredient lists are refreshingly short. The water lily seeds are sourced from India. They are then shipped to Los Angeles where they are popped and seasoned with nutritional yeast, extra-virgin olive oil, onion powder, and sea salt. These snacks are vegan, gluten-free, and grain-free with no seed oils, added sugar, artificial colors, or artificial flavors. A one-ounce bag has about 120 calories.

My favorites are Vegan Cheese and Himalayan Pink Salt. The Vegan Cheese flavor has the savory quality I want from chips without the heaviness, while the Himalayan Pink Salt version is simple enough that I do not get tired of it. I can finish a whole bag late at night without feeling as though I have consumed half my daily calories while watching Netflix.

Doosra: Why Did Nobody Put Chocolate in Boondi Before?

Doosra’s founder, Kartik Das, was born in Chennai, grew up in Singapore, and now lives in Queens, New York. His idea starts with namkeen, that broad and wonderful universe of Indian savory snacks, but then goes somewhere completely unexpected.

Doosra combines spiced boondi with nuts and chocolate.

The first time I tasted it, my immediate reaction was: Why did nobody think of this before?

The Peanut and White Chocolate mix combines tiny, crispy chickpea-flour boondi, roasted peanuts, and caramelized white chocolate. It sounds like a strange combination until you eat it. The boondi brings salt and spice, the peanuts add crunch, and then, just towards the end, you get a bite of creamy white chocolate.

The Dark Chocolate and Walnut version feels a little more sophisticated, with spiced boondi, roasted walnuts and dark chocolate. It is the perfect snack to satisfy my sugar cravings.

What I like about Doosra is that Das did not simply put old-fashioned namkeen in a stylish bag and call it a modern trail mix. He created something new from flavors he already knew. knows.

Confusion Snacks: Exactly How I Eat

Founder Aadit Patel describes himself as a child of the Indian diaspora who grew up “confused” –- not entirely Indian and not entirely American. Rather than choosing one identity, he built a snack company around the space in between them.

Patel started Confusion Snacks with just a few thousand dollars, selling at farmers markets and listening to what people actually wanted. His flavors reflect the way many Indian Americans eat: not by sep- arating cultures, but by mixing them: just like we often find our pantries filled with Masala Maggi next to Ital- ian pasta, mango chutney next to and Mexican salsa.

The company uses Indian spices and roasted peanuts with avocado oil rather than the seed oils found in many packaged snacks. The Hot Black Truffle roasted peanuts are probably the best example. Truffle and turmeric do not have a history together, but why shouldn’t they come together now? The earthy truffle works surprisingly well with warm spices. The Spicy Chili flavor combines the tangy, cooling flavors of dry green mango powder with Kashmiri red chili and cumin to deliver a playful, bold heat.

What I find most interesting is not whether these snacks are “authentically Indian.” They are authenti- cally Indian American. They taste like people who grew up eating one thing at home and another thing with friends, then stopped believing they had to choose between the two.

Bollygood: Nimbu Pani in a Can

Bollygood immediately took me back to two drinks I grew up with: homemade nimbu pani and jal jeera.

Founder Maxine Henderson was born in Canada to parents who immigrated from Kerala in the 1960s. She spent many childhood summers in India, where nimbu pani was part of the sensory overload she remembers so vividly — of family, food, Bollywood movies, bright colors, and homemade drinks.

In 2021, she launched Bollygood, turning the nimbu pani of her childhood into sparkling lemonade and limeade. Her husband, former NBA player and beverage entrepreneur Alan Henderson, helped her navigate the business side, but the flavors came come directly from Maxine’s own memories of India.

That story makes the drinks more interesting. This is not simply an American soda with cumin sprinkled in into it. It is a second-generation Indian woman taking something deeply familiar, reshaping it to match how her own family drinks today, and putting it into a can.

The cans themselves are colorful and fun to read. Inside, the drinks are refreshing, lightly sweet, and much lower in calories than the sodas I usually avoid.

The Lemon Mango Turmeric is the easiest entry point, with the sweet quality of mango that sets this nimbu pani apart from regular American lemonade. The Lime Basil Cumin flavor is even more interesting, with cumin and spice sparking memories of recalling the digestive drink served before meals in India.

A Different Kind of Indian Snack Aisle

For a long time, Indian packaged foods in America fell seemed to fall into two categories. There were products imported for South Asians and sold in Indian grocery stores with little explanation. Then there were “Indian-inspired” products created for everyone else, often with the spice and the personality toned down.

This new generation is a lot more interesting. These inspired new founders are not afraid of words like makhana, boondi, bajra, or jal jeera. And they are also not afraid to add chocolate, truffles, nutritional yeast, or sparkling water.

Those of us who grew up between cultures do not eat in neat categories. We can crave namkeen and chocolate at the same time. We can want our mother’s nimbu pani, but also want it cold, fizzy, and ready to pull from the refrigerator.

I still visit the Indian grocery store and feel the pull of those familiar packets. I probably always will. Food nostalgia is powerful, especially when it comes in crunchy form.

But my snack drawer is changing. Now there is makhana that I actually want to eat: boondi mixed with chocolate, hot black truffle peanuts, and nimbu pani in a can.

Perhaps I have not cured my snacking habit after all. I have simply upgraded it.

Sucheta Rawal is an award-winning food and travel writer who has traveled to over 120 countries across seven continents, experiencing the world through her palate. She inspires people to travel more meaningfully and sustainably through her nonprofit, Go Eat Give, and her books, Beato Goes To. Find her on social @SuchetaRawal.