Sinki: Nepal’s Fermented Dried Radish and Its Warming Sour Broth

Sinki — मुला सिन्की — is one of Nepal’s great fermented preserves. It is made from radish taproots that are wilted, packed tightly into a pit or jar, and left to ferment naturally before being sun-dried into hard, tangy strands. The result keeps for a year or more without refrigeration, which is exactly why hill households have relied on it for generations.

Where many cultures pickle vegetables in brine, Sinki is a dry lacto-ferment: wild bacteria do the work, building the deep sourness and savoury aroma that make it unmistakable.

Dried Sinki is rinsed and then simmered, usually with a tempering of timur (Sichuan pepper), dried chillies, turmeric, and garlic. The classic dish is sinki ko jhol — a thin, intensely tangy broth eaten with rice and a dollop of ghee, prized as a warming, digestive accompaniment in the cold months.

Its sourness brightens an otherwise plain meal of rice and dal, and a small amount of dried Sinki rehydrates into a generous pot, stretching a little a long way.

Sinki belongs to the radish-growing mid-hills (Pahad) and is made wherever the autumn radish harvest is heavy — across the central and eastern hills and into the Kathmandu Valley. A widely told Newar legend traces the birth of Sinki and its leafy cousin Gundruk to the Valley itself: when invading armies threatened Kirtipur, farmers are said to have buried their radishes and greens to hide them, and when they dug the cache up months later it had fermented into something fragrant and sour — and a tradition was born.

Whatever the truth of the legend, the craft is a hill one through and through. Radishes are at their best after the cool post-monsoon harvest, so Sinki-making is a late-autumn ritual, packing winter sourness into a preserve that will outlast the cold season.

For Nepalis in Canada, foods like Sinki carry the memory of village winters and grandmothers’ kitchens. Its bracing, fermented tang is hard to find anywhere outside a Nepali pantry.

We are working to keep traditional ferments like Sinki on our shelves alongside its cousins. In the meantime, explore our full range of fermented Nepali staples — including Gundruk and Tori Gundruk — at our Nepali grocery in Canada.