It’s a Pani Puri day as Google Doodle celebrates the most popular Indian street food

Google Doodle is celebrating pani puri and terms it as a ‘popular South Asian street food’ made of a crispy shell stuffed with potatoes, chickpeas, spices, or chilis and flavored waters. And there’s a variety of pani puri for everyone’s taste buds! On this day in 2015, a restaurant in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, achieved the World Record for serving the most flavors of pani puri by offering 51 options!

This popular street food goes by different names, as there are many regional variations that exist across India. In Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, the name pani puri describes the bite-sized street food commonly filled with boiled chickpeas, a white pea mixture, and sprouts dipped in tangy and spicy pani. In the northern Indian states of Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, and New Delhi, the potato and chickpea-filled treat dunked in jaljeera-flavored water is called gol gappe or gol gappa. The name puchkas or fuchkas is used in West Bengal and parts of Bihar and Jharkhand, with the key ingredient for this variety being tamarind pulp.

Pani Puri was first prepared by Draupadi during the time of the Mahabharata. The legend goes that when Draupadi became the wife of the Pandavas, the warriors were still living in exile with limited resources. Kunti, Pandava’s mother told her to use some leftover aloo sabzi and wheat dough to make something that would satisfy the hunger of all five men. The resulting dish that Draupadi made was a bite-sized pani puri that helped satisfy the Pandavas’ hunger.

Though there are many different types of filling and pani for everyone’s unique palette, there are two things universal do’s with regard to pani puri: eat the pani puri quickly to avoid the puri getting soggy or leaking, and always eat it in one bite to avoid a crumbly mess.

Pani Puri was first prepared by Draupadi during the time of the Mahabharata. The legend goes that when Draupadi became the wife of the Pandavas, the warriors were still living in exile with limited resources. Kunti, Pandava’s mother told her to use some leftover aloo sabzi and wheat dough to make something that would satisfy the hunger of all five men. The resulting dish that Draupadi made was a bite-sized pani puri that helped satisfy the Pandavas’ hunger.