Sizzling, spicy, and scrumptious, kebabs have captivated food connoisseurs and casual diners for centuries. The dish feels both indulgent and familiar—found at royal banquets and smoky street corners alike. In Lucknow, kebabs demand dressing up; in Old Delhi, they draw crowds, and sometimes they’re a late-night casual order. For a familiar dish, kebabs have lived many lives, crossing borders, and adapting, and reinventing themselves everywhere they go.
Building on this rich story, it becomes clear that the kebab has undergone many reinterpretations, identities, and faces, which is exactly what makes it worth exploring.
Today’s galouti, seekh, kakori, and boti kebabs are the result of centuries of movement. Streetside cooks migrated, princely kitchens shaped tastes, exile forced adaptation, and cities absorbed these flavours. The dish dates so far back that its true origin is still debated.
While kebabs are often linked with Mughal refinement, their history in India predates the Empire by centuries. Early forms of kebabs are believed to have begun in the hunter-gatherer era, when meat was grilled over open fires for ease of eating. Over time, this basic technique evolved as regional kitchens adapted it, with significant influence from migrating cooks and, later, Imperial patronage through distinct historical periods.
Under the Mughals, kebabs gained royal associations, becoming richer and more elaborate than their rustic street counterparts.
This is not just a story about meat and fire. Geography, migration, patronage, and survival shape its journey. The dish belongs everywhere without ever being the same. Tracing the history of kebabs in India traces the movement of people and is a reminder that food remembers journeys long after they’ve ended.
The Origin Of The Kebabs
Long before the kebab became universally loved and widely experimented with, it existed simply as a method of cooking. Osama Jalali, a culinary historian and food writer, explains that the word “kebab” has Arabic and Persian origins, meaning “to roast” or “to grill.” In its earliest form, kebab was not a recipe, but a solution to a problem. It was developed by hunter-gatherers, nomadic soldiers, and travellers moving across Central Asia.
Meat was skewered on swords, iron rods, or even broken tree branches and cooked over an open fire. There were no marinades or elaborate spice blends. There were certainly no kitchens—just fire, meat, and hunger. Fire cooking dates back to the earliest days of humanity on Earth. Cooking meat on sticks is essentially what a kebab is. Before the kebab became the spicy, flavorful dish we know today, with almost a hundred renditions, it was simply sustenance.
Pushpesh Pant, an Indian academic, food historian, and author, draws from historical research. He argues that kebabs did not arrive fully formed from elsewhere. Practices like roasting meat on sharp skewers existed in India long before imperial kitchens formalised them.
One of the most persistent myths about kebabs in India is that they are inherently “Mughlai.” Both Pant and Jalali push back against this idea. Jalali locates the kebab’s early popularity in India around the 15th century. He traces its movement from Central Asia, accompanied by soldiers and traders.
Meanwhile, Pant urges us to look even further back. “We make a mistake when we say Mughlai cuisine,” he says. He points out that Turkic-Afghan dynasties ruled large parts of North India for nearly 200–300 years before the Mughals established their rule. More importantly, he argues that grilling meat over fire predates all empires. “Our ancestors everywhere in the world were hunter-gatherers. Once they tamed fire, they pit-roasted meat. That is grilling,” Pant concluded.
In this sense, kebab is less an imported dish and more a shared human instinct. It has been refined over time through contact, movement, and memory.
What Allowed The The Kebab To Travel So Well?
The dish’s practicality made it highly portable, requiring no vessels, minimal preparation, and offering high nutritional value, especially in terms of protein—vital for soldiers and traders.
Pant argues that many foods we now romanticise began as necessities, not luxuries, and kebabs are no exception. Their identity was shaped by geography and movement, not refinement.
Jalali emphasises kebab’s portability: “It doesn’t need any preparation time. It doesn’t need any utensils.” The minimal ingredients and lack of elaborate infrastructure made the dish ideal for people who were constantly on the move.
Pant frames this universality in basic terms. He links kebabs’ global appeal to a primal attraction to char and smoke: “There is in our DNA an affinity for a char-grilled dish.” Nearly every meat-eating culture has some version of grilled protein, explaining the presence of kebabs from Central Asia to Southeast Asia, even if flavours and techniques differ.
As kebabs moved, they absorbed local sensibilities. Jalali notes that Middle Eastern versions tend to be lightly seasoned, relying on salt and pepper, while Indian kebabs are layered with aromatics—such as cardamom, garam masala, and rose water—reflecting regional palates. Thus, travel didn’t dilute the kebab; it expanded it.
The Evolution Of Kebabs In India
While kebabs travelled across regions with relative ease, Jalali is clear that a significant transformation occurred when they reached the Indian subcontinent. Kebabs were not invented here, but rather the style underwent a dramatic transformation: the chunky, simply seasoned meats of Central Asia evolved into the iconic minced, spiced, and aromatic dishes now associated with the region.
Building on this transformation, Indian spices, fats, and cooking sensibilities reshaped the texture and flavour of kebabs. Minced meat kebabs—seekh, shami, galouti, and kakori—rose in popularity, blending in lentils, garam masala, cardamom, and unfamiliar aromatics.
As a result of these changes, the focus shifted from just sustenance to a culinary and sensory experience. Pant’s work often emphasises that Indian cuisine absorbs external influences rather than replicating them. Kebabs followed the same trajectory. They became layered, localised, and embedded in everyday eating.
The Kebab Enters India’s Royal Mughal Courts
One of the kebab’s most compelling traits is its fluid movement between social worlds. Jalali traces an arc: what began as soldier food became mass food, then entered royal kitchens. This rise was not one-way—kebabs stayed popular on the streets even as courts refined them.
In Mughal and regional nawabi kitchens, khansamas, a traditional Indian/South Asian head cook, steward, or butler, began innovating—not inventing kebabs, but adapting them to suit a rather elite palette.
Jalali recounts the well-known story of a toothless nawab in Awadh, Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula, whose inability to chew led cooks to develop kebabs so tender they melted on the tongue. The result was the legendary Galouti Kebab, made from finely minced meat (often mutton) and over 100 exotic spices, pounded until it reached a paste-like consistency, perfect for a toothless palate. As Jalali points out, the royal cooks (also referred to as rakabdars) invented such versions to gain approval from the kings.
Hence, this is where minced and melt-in-the-mouth kebabs—galouti, kakori, and shami—began to flourish. Techniques evolved: meat was pounded, fat was carefully balanced, and spices were calibrated. Eventually, kebabs were often served as light snacks in courts, as they were easy to prepare and suitable for large gatherings.
At the same time, kebabs never lost their accessibility. They were easy to cook, required minimal preparation, and worked equally well as a snack or a meal. Pant notes that Indian food traditions rarely operate in binaries of elite and popular; instead, they circulate between spaces. Kebabs, he argues, exemplify this movement—equally at home in a royal daawat and a roadside stall.
It’s pertinent to note that Pant, however, is careful to separate the refinement of the kebab from its origin. While many believe that kebabs are a product of the Mughal courts, in India, he argues that these stories of royal invention were retrofitted later. Street vendors, seeking legitimacy, often claimed courtly ancestry. In his view, what we call “Mughlai cuisine” took shape after Delhi’s political decline. Cooks migrated to places like Rampur, Bhopal, and Patiala in search of stability. “This is where the so-called Mughlai cuisine developed,” he says—not in imperial abundance, but in exile and adaptation. Hence, the kebab is, and always will be, rooted in the streets, not the Mughal courts.
The Streets Will Always Be Home To Kebabs
Both Jalali and Pant agree on one crucial point: in their view, the kebab ultimately belongs to the street.
“I would call it street food,” Pant says, noting that kebabs need equipment and skills most home kitchens lack. We eat kebabs outside—Old Delhi, Lucknow, or roadside stalls—because that’s where the craft is. “We rarely cook them at home,” he says.
Over time, kebabs became markers of regional identity. This happened not because they stayed static, but because they adapted. Jalali maps this movement clearly. Delhi boasts robust seekh and shami kebabs. Awadh is known for aromatic galoutis and kakoris. Rampur is known for its chapli kebabs, a speciality of the Rohilla Pathans. Hyderabad offers stone-cooked pathar kebabs, while Kashmir serves gravy-laden maaz kebabs. Each type reflects geography, available ingredients, and cultural exchange.
Pant adds that these identities are constantly being renegotiated. Food memory, traditions, migration, and even social media all play a role in how kebabs are claimed and narrated today. What remains constant is the kebab’s ability to feed—simply, satisfyingly, and across boundaries. Ultimately, the kebab resists singular ownership. It is not solely Mughlai, not purely royal, not entirely foreign or indigenous. It is a dish shaped by fire, movement, and necessity. One that has followed people across centuries, adapting wherever they paused long enough to light a flame.
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