Kanji is going places. So is its fancier cousin

No one ever made a fuss about kanji. Or pakhala. These were quiet meals. Something your grandmother poured into a steel plate when it was too hot to cook. Something you ate sitting on the kitchen floor, with pickle or a bit of roasted papad. You didn’t talk about it. You just ate it.

Now, the world is paying attention.

From Odisha’s pakhala to Kerala’s kanji, these simple rice-and-water dishes are finding themselves in unexpected places—on café menus, in food columns, even on wellness blogs. They haven’t changed much. But how we see them has.

In Odisha, cold rice in clay pots
In peak summer, pakhala is a lifesaver. Leftover rice is soaked in water and left overnight. By morning, it has a mild tang. You eat it cold, with mustard pickles, fried vegetables, or curd. Some add raw onion. Some throw in green chillies. It cools the body and keeps the stomach light.

As the BBC recently wrote, it costs less than a dollar to make. But it does a lot. It fills you up, keeps you hydrated, and helps your gut. There’s even a Pakhala Dibasa now—Odias celebrate it every March as a way of honouring something they’ve always known: this dish works.

In Kerala, same idea, different bowl
Kanji plays a similar role. In many homes, it’s still the go-to dinner—especially when it’s raining outside or someone’s feeling under the weather. There’s hot kanji with a bit of salt and coconut chutney. And then there’s pazhankanji, made with yesterday’s rice. That one’s served cold, often with green gram curry or buttermilk. The rice is slightly fermented, a little sour, and easy on the stomach.

It’s not flashy. But it’s honest. And when the heat is climbing and your appetite disappears, it does the job better than most.

Why now?
Because the things these dishes do—cool the body, help digestion, cut food waste—are exactly what modern food trends talk about. The difference is, kanji and pakhala were doing it long before it was cool.

As Onmanorama pointed out in a feature on kanji and its global cousins, almost every rice-eating culture has some version of this dish. Congee in China. Okayu in Japan. Juk in Korea. But most of those have travelled the world in more polished forms—with meat, broth, toppings. India’s versions are still mostly stripped back. No extras. Just rice, water, and time.

Not just old rice
The fermented versions of these dishes are now being studied for their health benefits. As Onmanorama wrote in an earlier piece, kanji made from parboiled red rice brings fibre, iron, and slow-release energy. Fermentation adds probiotics. The whole thing is good for digestion, and it keeps you full without making you heavy. No blender, no packaging, no food waste.

You take what’s left in the pot and make a fresh meal out of it the next day. That’s smart food, even if no one called it that before.

The rise of the underdog
These aren’t dishes that scream for attention. They’re quiet. Familiar. But slowly, they’re getting noticed. Not because they’ve been reinvented, but because people are finally ready to listen.

Kanji is going places. So is pakhala. And maybe, after years of sitting in the background, they’re exactly the kind of food we need to bring back to the front.