What is hing and why is it so popular in Indian cuisine?

Hing’s English name is asafoetida. It can be spelled with or without an ‘o’.
It’s a white powder that usually comes in a plastic squeeze bottle.
Hing is the name for asafoetida in Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati, and other North Indian languages.
Hing is the dried gum latex produced from the roots of the ferula tree. The ferula tree is similar to fennel, coriander, and carrots. The particular variety for hing is a short tree usually less than ten feet tall and it has sulfur-containing compounds which adds to the pungency of the resulting hing.
The gum-latex is exuded from the root. After drying, the result will be turned into the white powder used in cooking.

Native region and history

Despite its popularity in South Asian cuisine, hing was not historically grown on the subcontinent. Hing is grown in Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia, and northwest China.
No one knows when people started cultivating hing for food or medicine, but we know it has been used in traditional medicine for millennia. Dr. Manoshi Bhattacharya says that hing arrived in modern day India with traders and travelers from ancient Persia. She believes hing was a part of South Asian cuisine by 600 BCE. It is at least from 300 BCE because it is mentioned in the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata.
In the year 2020, India started attempting to grow asafoetida themselves. Despite hing’s popularity in many Indian diets, hing has largely been imported from Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan with Indians spending over $100 million a year to import it.
India had never grown hing until that point, but it processed the root of the ferula plant to create the powdered hing you are familiar with on store shelves.
In 2018, India’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research purchased six varieties of seeds from Iran and planned to research domestic hing cultivation.
The ferula plant from which asafoetida is produced tends to grow wild instead of in farms. It also grows in dry soil below 95 degrees Fahrenheit or 35 degrees Celsius so India’s typically fertile lands with monsoon seasons are not well suited for it.
Instead, India hopes to grow domestic hing in the mountainous Lahaul and Spiti district of Himachal Pradesh. This area of India is typically considered harsh for many agricultural products, but the ferula plant may grow well here due to the dry soil and cooler temperatures.
If you have not seen pictures or videos of Spiti, it is worth a quick Google search. It is a tourism destination for adventurous Indians who want to hike and backpack through nature. In the show notes, I linked a video of traveling through Spiti Valley from the popular Indian’s backpacker and filmmaker Kanishk Gupta. It is well worth a watch to see the beauty of the region.

Spiti Valley documentary

India accounts for 40% of the world’s hing consumption.

Smell and Nicknames

The word asafoetida is derived from the Latinized Persian ‘asa’ which is a type of resin and the Latin ‘foetidus’ meaning stinky.
Many European languages which do not regularly cook with hing have less than complimentary nicknames for it. The English nickname is Devil’s Dung. Some Western languages such as Finnish, French, and Turkish have similar nicknames utilizing colorfully profane words which I will not repeat here in case your kids are nearby.
Although European cuisines don’t use hing anymore, historians know from ancient texts that the ancient Romans actually cooked with it to season their food and for medicine. No one knows why hing disappeared from Europeans diets, but it is likely due to the difficulty of growing or transporting it from its native central Asia to Europe.
While raw hing is very pungent, the smell dissipates when cooked. After it is cooked, it has a similar taste to onions, garlic, and shallots.

Diets that commonly use hing

The South Asian religion Jainism prescribes a vegetarian diet that also restricts eating root vegetables such as garlic, onions, and potatoes to prevent injuring small insects and to prevent the entire plant from getting uprooted and killed. Jainism is a very ancient religion from at least the 6th century BCE and possibly going back to the 10th century BCE. While typically associated with Gujarat and western India, Jains live all over modern day India and the world. Due to many Jains not eating root vegetables, hing is a popular way to add garlic-and-onion-like flavors to Jain cuisine.
Some Hindus, especially South Indian Brahmins and Vaishnava Hindus, also refrain from eating root vegetables. As such, they also adopted the use of hing to flavor their foods.
In his book The Flavor Equation, Nik Sharma explains that his widowed grandmother no longer ate garlic and onions after his grandfather passed away. This is traditional custom for widows from his grandparents Hindu community in Uttar Pradesh. At this point, Nik says that his grandmother started adding copious amounts of hing to her food to replace the flavor of onions and garlic.

Digestive and health benefits

In Ayurvedic medicine, hing is used to aid digestion and gas. A 30-day study of adults with indigestion were given two asafoetida tablets a day. The experimental group reported significant improvements in bloating and digestion compared to the placebo control group.
Research suggests that asafoetida is a good source of antioxidants. As a result, hing may help protect against inflammation, cancer, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes.
There is less research in these areas, but some recent studies on animals suggest that asafoetida may have antimicrobial benefits, protect brain health, and ease asthma symptoms.
Of course, this is a podcast about Indian food in North America, not a medical podcast. Take that previous information as you would an aunty’s unsolicited advice.

How to cook with hing

Cooking hing removes much of its pungency, especially in the smell. It’s important to cook hing well.
Once you open a container of hing, it’s important to store it in an airtight container to prevent losing its flavor.
Hing is usually added to a dish with other unroasted spices. In South Asian cooking, pre-roasted spice blends such as garam masala and sambar powder are usually added near the end of cooking to prevent overcooking them. In contrast, unroasted spices such as coriander and turmeric are usually added earlier in the recipe. This is typically when hing would be added too as it is not pre-roasted. This timing gives the hing more time to cook and reduce its pungency. It also allows the flavors to mix well into the dish.
One popular time to add hing to a dish is during a tharka or chaunk. A tharka is the tempering of spices in hot oil. Any American born desi will remember their favorite aunty tempering spices with the popping of mustard seeds and frying curry leaves.
First, hot oil or ghee is added to a pan or tava. Then, spices and vegetables are added, usually mustard seeds which pop in the hot oil, followed by other spices that will not burn easily like cumin seeds and whole chilies. Later, curry leaves will be added. Also, vegetables like onions can be added. Hing can be added in a tharka, usually right before the curry leaves but before vegetables like onions or tomatoes. But of course, every aunty has her own preferences.
Hing can be added to many dishes depending on the cook’s or eater’s flavor preferences and dietary restrictions.

Thank you for listening! You can find a transcript and the sources used to make this episode on cooklikeanaunty.com/hing. You can also find recipes for popular Indian dishes on the website or the Cook Like An Aunty YouTube channel. Links in the show notes.