Nepali Green Leafy Vegetables: Rayo Saag, Latte Saag, Farsi & Iskus ko Munta

In a Nepali kitchen, greens fall into two families. Saag is leafy greens — the whole leaf, cooked down into a soft, savoury side. Munta is different: it’s the tender growing tip of a climbing gourd vine — the top few inches of new shoot, young leaf and curling tendril that you pinch off before the plant turns woody. Both end up in the same place, fried in mustard oil as the green on a dal-bhat plate, but they come from different parts of the garden.

None of these are exotic or hard to understand once you know the names. They’re simply what grows easily in the hills and terraces of Nepal — leafy mustard and amaranth for saag, and the tips of pumpkin and chayote vines for munta — turned into everyday food with almost no fuss.

Rayo saag is the one most people picture first. It’s broadleaf mustard greens (Brassica juncea): big, slightly ruffled leaves with a warm, peppery bite that mellows as it cooks. Fried simply in mustard oil with garlic and dried red chilli, it’s the default green across much of Nepal — quick, cheap and full of flavour.

Rayo has a second life, too. When the harvest is heavy, the same mustard leaves are fermented and sun-dried into gundruk, Nepal’s beloved sour preserved green. So a bundle of fresh rayo saag on the stove and a jar of dried gundruk on the shelf are, quite literally, the same leaf at two different stages — more on that in our gundruk & sinki guide.

Latte saag is amaranth greens (Amaranthus) — the gentler counterpart to peppery rayo. The leaves are soft and mild, closer to spinach, sometimes tinged red or purple, and they cook down quickly into a tender, almost buttery saag. Because it’s so mild, latte is a favourite for children and for anyone who finds mustard greens too sharp.

It’s a monsoon-season green above all — latte grows fast and abundantly through the rains, so it turns up on plates all summer, often cooked with nothing more than mustard oil, garlic and a pinch of salt to let its own sweetness come through.

Farsi means pumpkin (and its relatives), and farsi ko munta is the tender growing tip of the pumpkin vine — the soft young shoots, small leaves and curly tendrils, harvested before they toughen. Nothing on the pumpkin plant goes to waste: long before the fruit is ready, its tips are a vegetable in their own right, with a fresh, faintly grassy, comforting flavour.

Farsi ko munta is usually stripped of any stringy outer skin, then fried like saag — mustard oil, garlic, chilli, salt — and it holds a little more texture than a pure leaf green, which is part of its appeal. It’s a taste that says late summer in the hills.

Iskus is chayote — the pale-green, pear-shaped squash (also called chow-chow or squash) that grows on sprawling vines across Nepali hillsides and rooftops. Iskus ko munta is that vine’s tender top shoots, and for many Nepalis it’s the most prized munta of all: delicate, slightly sweet, and tender enough that it barely needs cooking.

A quick fry in mustard oil with garlic — sometimes a little dried chilli and timur — is all it takes. Where the fruit (iskus) is an everyday curry vegetable, the munta is a small seasonal treat, and finding a fresh bundle of it is a genuine pleasure for anyone who grew up eating it.

The method is nearly the same for all of them, and it starts with mustard oil. Heat mustard oil until it just smokes, drop in sliced garlic and a dried red chilli (and, in the hills, a pinch of jimbu or fenugreek seeds for aroma), then add the washed greens with a little salt. Rayo and munta want a few minutes; soft latte needs only a moment. Cook until just wilted and glossy — not to mush — and finish, if you like, with a crack of timur for that citrusy Himalayan lift.

Served alongside rice, dal and a dab of achar, that plate of simple bhuteko saag is everyday Nepali eating at its best. Fresh rayo, latte and munta are seasonal and local, but the flavour base that makes them taste Nepali — mustard oil, timur, jimbu — and a jar of gundruk for when greens are out of season are always on our shelf, shipped across Canada. See more in our guide to what makes Nepali cooking its own.