Bhutanese Ezay | Easy & Simple Bhutanese Recipe

Let’s start talking about Ezay as a Food Appetizer from the beginning and later, I would be sharing Bhutanese Ezay recipe.

Jump to Recipe

As a matter of fact, Bhutanese people use lots of chillies in most of the dishes they consume. One of our favourite food is Ezay.

What is Bhutanese Ezay?

Ezay is basically a kind of chilly sauce, also considered as a food appetizer locally made up condiments like Red dry chillies, green chillies, tomato, onion, garlic, cheese.

Ezay is common among Bhutanese people. As it’s considered as a type of Chutney in Bhutan. Some people spell it out as Bhutanese Eze.

While searching it on the internet, you can search it with both the terms.

We eat Ezay with almost all the food, like rice, roti, momos, chow-mein noodles etc.

Bhutanese Ezay Ingredients

Generally, it all depends on person to person to use Green chilli or Red chilli whichever you prefer more.

Most of the time we use our local chillies to make Ezay because of its taste and delicacy.

We also need an onion, tomato, onion leaves, coriander, garlic, ginger, salt, a little amount of water and some oil.

Must Watch: How to make Cabbage Salad (Cabbage Ezay)

Quantity of oil depends upon what type of Ezay you are making. Using garlic and ginger are optional. Use coriander because it helps to make your dish lots of taste.

With the above-listed ingredients, we can make so many different styles of Ezay.

Types of Ezay in Bhutan

1.    Fried Dry Red Chilli Ezay

This is the common type of Ezay available almost in every home in Bhutan and especially served with Momos, Rice, Noodles, Roti and even with the boiled eggs.

In some part of the country, this type of Ezay is especially known by its name momos chilli sauce and loved by all and does ask how its made?

Here is how its made simple and flavourful. check it out, guys!

You can find the recipe of this Ezay at the end of this article.

2.    Crushed Dry Red Chilli Ezay

Put the well washed red dry chilli into the stone mortar and smash the chilli with the pestle until chillies are break into small sizes.

You can also use mixture grinder to make chillies into pieces. However, the use of mortar and pestle gives more taste maybe because it’s my kind of perception, haha. 

Here you don’t have to make sure whether the chilli is kept in the sun for 2 to 3 day or in the oven to get very well dry. It is very simple to crush the dry red chilli.

Just put the chilli into the mortar and add 1 tsp of water and add salt at first. Water will work as a lubricant and will help chillies to chop quicker and salt will help to keep your dry chill in the mortar only.

Mix chopped onion, tomato well with the crushed chilli. At last add coriander, farmer cheese or American cheese.

I would suggest use farmer cheese if you have because it makes lots of taste in your Ezay. Rice is the best option to have with Ezay.

3.   Burnt Dry Red Chilli Ezay

By the name of the Ezay itself clearly explains what is dry red chilli burnt Ezay is. Basically, it is made by keeping the dry red chillies on small flame and let it burn for little and make Ezay.

This type of Ezay is served with fried rice, even with plain rice, it is also served with drinks. This Ezay is one of my favourites.

4.    Green Chilli Bhutanese Ezay

This Ezay is very much easy to prepare and gives an exquisite taste. This Ezay is served most of the time with rice. In Bhutan, we use our local chilli in seasons.

In offseasons, we use imported Indian green chilli. Indian green chilli is insanely spicy.

If you are a spicy lover you will enjoy this Ezay if not you won’t like it. The difference between Bhutanese chilli and Indian chilli is in its size and spicy level.

Bhutanese green chilli is bigger in size as compared to Indian green chilli. Moreover, Bhutanese green chilli is less spicy compared to Indian green chilli.

Print Recipe

Ezay Food Appetizer | Easy & Simple Bhutanese Recipe

Let's start talking about Ezay as a food appetizer from the beginning and later, I would be sharing Bhutanese Ezay recipe. As a matter of fact,..

Prep Time10 mins

Cook Time1 min

Course: Appetizer

Cuisine: Bhutanese

Keyword: bhutan, bhutan food, bhutan national food, bhutanese food, ema datshi, ezay, ezay recipe, food appetizer, food of bhutan, how to make ezay

Servings: 4

Equipment

• Mixture Grinder

Ingredients

• 4-5 Dry red chillies cut into half
• 1 Tomato
• 1 Onion
• 5-6 Cloves of sectioned garlic
• 1 Small ginger (optional)
• 6-7 tbsp Oil
• Salt to taste
• Coriander
• ¼ Pepper (optional)

Instructions

• Wash chillies, tomato, onion, garlic, coriander, and ginger thoroughly.
• Cut them into any shape, doesn’t matter because, at last, we are going to grind them using the grinder.
• Now heat the oil and put tomato, garlic, ginger, onion one after one and fry them for nearly 2-3 mins.
• After frying 2-3 mins add cut dry red chilli on fried tomato, onion, garlic and fry for again 2-3 mins.
• Put the above fried into a mixture grinder, add salt to taste, pepper if you like. Cover the mixture grinder and grind it until your recipe turns into consistency. It takes less than 2 mins.
• Take out from the mixture with the help of a spoon and put it in the container
• Garnish the Ezay with pinches of cut coriander leaves.

Notes

If you don’t have mixture grinder, smash them using the stone mortar and pestle.

You can also check out our other Bhutanese Cuisines:

• Kewa Datshi Recipe
• Ema Datshi Recipe