Chinese bhel is a

fast food Fast food is a type of mass-produced food designed for commercial resale, with a strong priority placed on speed of service. It is a commercial term, limited to food sold in a restaurant or store with frozen, preheated or precooked ingredie ...

and

street food Street food is ready-to-eat food or drinks sold by a hawker, or vendor, in a street or at other public places, such as markets or fairs. It is often sold from a portable food booth, food cart, or food truck and is meant for immediate consumpt ...

item in India and is considered a part of Indo-Chinese cuisine. It is a variant of chop suey and

bhelpuri Bhelpuri is a savoury snack originating from India, and is also a type of chaat. It is made of puffed rice, vegetables and a tangy tamarind sauce, and has a crunchy texture. Bhel is often identified as a 'beach snack', strongly associated wit ...

. It is popular in

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the secon ...

Ingredients

Like most street food items, the recipe of Chinese bhel has many variants. The basic ingredients present in every recipe are crisp fried noodles, raw shredded cabbage, and one or more hot sauces. These ingredients are throughly mixed together in the style of making a

. The sauces could be Schezwan sauce, red chilli sauce, and/ or tomato ketchup. In addition, it may contain one or more of these ingredients: finely chopped onion, sliced

capsicum ''Capsicum'' () is a genus of flowering plants in the nightshade family Solanaceae, native to the Americas, cultivated worldwide for their chili pepper or bell pepper fruit. Etymology and names The generic name may come from Latin , me ...

, diced carrot, soya sauce, salt, black pepper powder,

ajinomoto is a Japanese multinational food and biotechnology corporation which produces seasonings, interlayer insulating materials for semiconductor packages for use in personal computers, cooking oils, frozen foods, beverages, sweeteners, amino acids, ...

, vingegar, and raw garlic paste in varying quantities. Sometimes chopped spring onion is used for garnishing.

Criticism

Chinese bhel stalls in Mumbai were criticized for poor hygiene and were suspected to have caused a

hepatitis E Hepatitis E is inflammation of the liver caused by infection with the hepatitis E virus (HEV); it is a type of viral hepatitis. Hepatitis E has mainly a fecal-oral transmission route that is similar to hepatitis A, although the viruses are unrel ...

epidemic over a two-month period in 2011. The

Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC; IAST: ), also known as the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), is the governing civic body of Mumbai, the capital city of Maharashtra. It is India's richest municipal corporation. The BMC ...

(MCGM) has issued strict orders not to let hawkers sell fried foodstuffs on pavements and Chinese food outside schools. The Congress party had recently demanded that the MCGM ban the sale of Chinese street food due to fears related to its use of

monosodium glutamate Monosodium glutamate (MSG), also known as sodium glutamate, is the sodium salt of glutamic acid. MSG is found naturally in some foods including tomatoes and cheese in this glutamic acid form. MSG is used in cooking as a flavor enhancer ...

References

External links

Chinese Bhel recipe by Sanjeev Kapoor

Chinese Bhel recipe by Tarla Dalal

Chinese Bhel recipe by Khana Khazana
Indian fast food Bihari cuisine North Indian cuisine Indian Chinese cuisine Street food in India {{india-cuisine-stub

Ingredients

Criticism

See also

References

External links