December 7, 2025 • 5 mins
Muthiya is a traditional Gujarati dumpling from India, enjoyed for breakfast or as a snack—and a childhood favorite of Chef Heena Patel from Besheram restaurant in San Francisco. These watermelon muthiyas are made with a mixture of chickpea, millet, and corn flours, as well as shredded watermelon flesh, rind, and juice—so there is no wasted watermelon! The dumplings are steamed and served with watermelon raita as a dipping sauce.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
[Music]
(00:06):
I'm Heena Patel, and I'm the executive chef and co-owner of Besheram.
And you are standing here and cooking next to me at my restaurant.
Which is situated in the Dogpatch historic district in San Francisco.
I'm highlighting watermelon today.
(00:29):
I'm kind of flirting with watermelon.
And this dish speaks to me a lot.
It's steam-cooked dumplings that my mom made with "dudhi," which is bottle gourd.
She also made it with "karela," which is bitter melon.
And I decided, why not try with watermelon?
(00:51):
Watermelon equals summer to me.
Gujarati cuisine is so rich, and handed down from the women in my family... for generations we celebrate the traditions.
This recipe is a celebration of those women.
Watermelon is a gourd so we're going to use it as it is.
(01:14):
This dish is gluten free.
We're using the "basan." Basan is used quite frequently in my cuisine, and it has natural protein and also acts as a thickening agent... it's a chickpea flour.
One cup of our basan and half the amount of millet
(01:40):
I'm adding some corn flour.
It adds the richness, the crunch, a little hardiness... and corn is in season.
We're going to start with a touch of oil.
We're going to flavor this batter with green chilies.
(02:02):
A touch of turmeric.
I love the bite of green chilies, but if you don't like it you can avoid adding the Fresno chilies.
Cilantro, and sugar, salt...
So these are all the dry ingredients I'm adding right now, and I'm mixing with our flour as you can see.
(02:29):
This is the asafetida.
And we want to mix it well, just as you would a cake with the dry ingredients before you add the wet. I'm doing the same.
Gujarati cuisine is all about adding the flavors layer by layer.
(02:54):
Now we're going to start adding a little moisture to this flour.
As a farmer, I learned to give respect to the vegetables very early in my life.
And that means using each and every part of every vegetable.
I've added the [shredded watermelon] rind already.
(03:15):
I have the fresh watermelon here already shredded with lots of juice and lots of color.
I'm using rind with the red watermelon [flesh] that gives the color.
(03:37):
[Sighs] I think this reminds me of my mom!
For my mom, this was our breakfast.
The first 20 years of my life I spent with my parents in India
and these are the dishes I grew up with.
This is what my batter looks like.
It has lots of moisture, and our watermelon can be seen through all around. We want that.
(04:04):
We want sticky.
At this point I'm going to try before we start putting it in the steamer I want to make sure it's well seasoned.
It's perfect.
Here I have parchment paper cut down into 8 x 8 or a little square size
(04:26):
And I put a touch of oil on top there.
We're making little dumplings.
I'm adding fresh watermelon right on top. We want that sweet juicy watermelon right on top.
(04:47):
And it tastes amazing. I promise!
This is our little bundle. We're going to lift it up, we're going to put it in a steamer. We're going to cook it for 15 minutes.
And when it comes out we're going to temper it and serve it with hot chai.
I'm going to put it on high heat. This is my water. I put the water up to the middle of the range in a pot.
(05:12):
And then the steam can come out. We want to make sure the steamer doesn't touch water.
We already have so much moisture in this dumpling, we don't want water to seep into it.
So the water is always at a rolling boil... we need that, but it should not touch our basket.
That's the trick.
(05:35):
In this steamer we're going to let them go for at least 15 minutes before we take it out.
(06:04):
Now we're going to heat up the oil and pour it all over, and then serve it with the raita and the chai.
So tempering in my cuisine is like waking up the dish.
Whenever my mom tempered the dish, we knew it was time for dinner.
We're going to use the same technique... waking up... brighten up... with the tempered oil on top.
(06:31):
That's going to be the first flavor in your mouth, so you want to put some flavor in this oil.
We're going to pop our mustard seeds, asafetida, a touch of chilies, and some curry leaves.
And then we pour it over the dumplings and have it with a hot chai and cold raita.
You can always try with one mustard seed and when it pops, it's time to add ingredients in a very fast manner.
(06:58):
We don't want to burn ingredients, but we want to cook them at a high temperature... and that's called tempering.
The Gujarati word for this is "baghar."
I'm going to start with our mustard seeds, then I'm going to add some chilies, some curry leaves, and asafetida.
So this is watermelon muthiya (07:28):
steam-cooked dumplings with watermelon.
It's flavorful, it's protein-rich, it's perfect to have it first thing in the morning.
And we have it with our watermelon raita.
(07:50):
I wish you could join me!
[Music fades]
[Music]
(00:06):
I'm Heena Patel, and I'm the executive chef and co-owner of Besheram.
And you are standing here and cooking next to me at my restaurant.
Which is situated in the Dogpatch historic district in San Francisco.
I'm highlighting watermelon today.
(00:29):
I'm kind of flirting with watermelon.
And this dish speaks to me a lot.
It's steam-cooked dumplings that my mom made with "dudhi," which is bottle gourd.
She also made it with "karela," which is bitter melon.
And I decided, why not try with watermelon?
(00:51):
Watermelon equals summer to me.
Gujarati cuisine is so rich, and handed down from the women in my family... for generations we celebrate the traditions.
This recipe is a celebration of those women.
Watermelon is a gourd so we're going to use it as it is.
(01:14):
This dish is gluten free.
We're using the "basan." Basan is used quite frequently in my cuisine, and it has natural protein and also acts as a thickening agent... it's a chickpea flour.
One cup of our basan and half the amount of millet
(01:40):
I'm adding some corn flour.
It adds the richness, the crunch, a little hardiness... and corn is in season.
We're going to start with a touch of oil.
We're going to flavor this batter with green chilies.
(02:02):
A touch of turmeric.
I love the bite of green chilies, but if you don't like it you can avoid adding the Fresno chilies.
Cilantro, and sugar, salt...
So these are all the dry ingredients I'm adding right now, and I'm mixing with our flour as you can see.
(02:29):
This is the asafetida.
And we want to mix it well, just as you would a cake with the dry ingredients before you add the wet. I'm doing the same.
Gujarati cuisine is all about adding the flavors layer by layer.
(02:54):
Now we're going to start adding a little moisture to this flour.
As a farmer, I learned to give respect to the vegetables very early in my life.
And that means using each and every part of every vegetable.
I've added the [shredded watermelon] rind already.
(03:15):
I have the fresh watermelon here already shredded with lots of juice and lots of color.
I'm using rind with the red watermelon [flesh] that gives the color.
(03:37):
[Sighs] I think this reminds me of my mom!
For my mom, this was our breakfast.
The first 20 years of my life I spent with my parents in India
and these are the dishes I grew up with.
This is what my batter looks like.
It has lots of moisture, and our watermelon can be seen through all around. We want that.
(04:04):
We want sticky.
At this point I'm going to try before we start putting it in the steamer I want to make sure it's well seasoned.
It's perfect.
Here I have parchment paper cut down into 8 x 8 or a little square size
(04:26):
And I put a touch of oil on top there.
We're making little dumplings.
I'm adding fresh watermelon right on top. We want that sweet juicy watermelon right on top.
(04:47):
And it tastes amazing. I promise!
This is our little bundle. We're going to lift it up, we're going to put it in a steamer. We're going to cook it for 15 minutes.
And when it comes out we're going to temper it and serve it with hot chai.
I'm going to put it on high heat. This is my water. I put the water up to the middle of the range in a pot.
(05:12):
And then the steam can come out. We want to make sure the steamer doesn't touch water.
We already have so much moisture in this dumpling, we don't want water to seep into it.
So the water is always at a rolling boil... we need that, but it should not touch our basket.
That's the trick.
(05:35):
In this steamer we're going to let them go for at least 15 minutes before we take it out.
(06:04):
Now we're going to heat up the oil and pour it all over, and then serve it with the raita and the chai.
So tempering in my cuisine is like waking up the dish.
Whenever my mom tempered the dish, we knew it was time for dinner.
We're going to use the same technique... waking up... brighten up... with the tempered oil on top.
(06:31):
That's going to be the first flavor in your mouth, so you want to put some flavor in this oil.
We're going to pop our mustard seeds, asafetida, a touch of chilies, and some curry leaves.
And then we pour it over the dumplings and have it with a hot chai and cold raita.
You can always try with one mustard seed and when it pops, it's time to add ingredients in a very fast manner.
(06:58):
We don't want to burn ingredients, but we want to cook them at a high temperature... and that's called tempering.
The Gujarati word for this is "baghar."
I'm going to start with our mustard seeds, then I'm going to add some chilies, some curry leaves, and asafetida.
So this is watermelon muthiya (07:28):
steam-cooked dumplings with watermelon.
It's flavorful, it's protein-rich, it's perfect to have it first thing in the morning.
And we have it with our watermelon raita.
(07:50):
I wish you could join me!
[Music fades]
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