Pav Bhaji (Mashed Vegetable Curry with Buttered Rolls)

Name: Pav Bhaji (Mashed Vegetable Curry with Buttered Rolls)
Total time: 50 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Maharashtrian
Ingredients: 400 g Potatoes, boiled; 200 g Cauliflower, finely chopped; 150 g Green peas; 1 Carrot, diced small; 1 Green bell pepper, diced; 2 Onions, finely chopped; 4 Tomatoes, finely chopped; 1.5 tbsp Ginger–garlic paste; 3 tbsp Pav bhaji masala; 1.5 tbsp Kashmiri chilli powder; 100 g Butter; 8 Pav (soft white rolls); 1 Lemon; Coriander leaves; Salt

Mumbai's griddle food: every vegetable in the kitchen mashed down into a red, buttery curry, scooped up with soft rolls toasted in yet more butter.

Source

Recipe by Mumbai street stalls · 🏺 Traditional · Mumbai street-food vendors, Maharashtra

Traditional dish — no single author — Mumbai street food with no single author. The reference describes it as a staple of Maharashtra that originated as a fast lunchtime dish for textile mill workers in Mumbai — mashed vegetables (potato, onion, chilli, peas, bell pepper, tomato) cooked in thick gravy on a flat griddle with generous butter, served with a soft buttered bread roll, garnished with coriander and more butter. That is the dish built here; the prose and quantities are our own.

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Watch it being made

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⏱ 50 min🍽 4 servings🔥 480 kcal🇮🇳 India🌶️🌶️

Vegetarian

Steps

Boil the potatoes, cauliflower, carrot and peas together until everything is very soft — about 15 minutes. Drain, keeping a cup of the water.
Melt 40 g of the butter in a wide, heavy pan. Fry the onions 8 minutes over medium-high heat until soft and browning at the edges.
Add the ginger–garlic paste and bell pepper, cook 2 minutes, then the tomatoes. Cook 10 minutes, pressing them down, until they break into a thick pulp.
Stir in the pav bhaji masala and chilli powder and cook 2 minutes, then tip in all the boiled vegetables with a splash of the cooking water and salt.
💡 3 tablespoons of masala looks alarming. It is correct — the bhaji is a big volume of bland vegetable and needs it.
Now mash. Use a potato masher and work the pan hard for 4–5 minutes, until there are no whole pieces left and the bhaji is a rough, thick, red mass.
💡 Mash by hand, never in a blender. Pav bhaji should have a slightly coarse texture — blended, it becomes baby food.
Add water a splash at a time and simmer 8 minutes to a thick, scoopable consistency. Stir in another 20 g butter and half the coriander.
Split the rolls almost through. Melt the remaining butter on a flat pan with a pinch of pav bhaji masala and press the cut sides down until deep golden and crisp — about 1 minute.
💡 Toast the rolls last, while the bhaji sits. They go leathery within minutes of leaving the pan.
Serve the bhaji with a knob of butter melting on top, raw onion, coriander and lemon wedges alongside, rolls on the side.

💡 Tips

Pav bhaji is a leftover-vegetable dish by origin — it fed textile mill workers a fast lunch. Beetroot, beans, courgette all disappear into it.
The red colour comes from tomatoes and Kashmiri chilli, not food dye. If yours is brown, you needed more tomato and less browning.
For a vegan version use oil or a plant butter and dairy-free rolls. It loses something real, but it still works.