Excerpted from the new book Third Culture Cooking: Classic Recipes for a New Generation by Zaynab Issa. Photos copyright © 2025 by Graydon Herriott. Published by Abrams.
A popular South Asian snack, chevro (or chewra) is made up of lots of crunchy fried bits and bobs tossed in a turmeric-stained, whole spice–infused oil. Essentially, it’s a savory fried trail mix. Making traditional chevro is too involved a process to be casual, so if you’re taking the time to make it, you’re making it to share it. When I think of chevro, I immediately picture my mom, my grandmother, and her sister gathered around a large stainless-steel pot (it’s giving Sanderson sisters), frying and seasoning each individual component in bulk during my sisters’ weddings. It’s perfect and necessary to have on hand in the house as a snack for peckish guests. Among all the different lentils and grains that are fried and added to traditional chevro, my grandmother would include a bag of kettle-cooked potato chips. In every gallon-sized zip-top bag filled with chevro, there were only a handful of potato chips. As the best ingredient in the mix, I would shuffle through the bag, find them, eat them all, and put the bag right back in the pantry, uninterested in anything other than those ultra- crunchy, flavorful chips. Now I keep gallon-sized bags of just the seasoned chips in my pantry, and you should, too.
