Kerala has a distinctive cuisine, very unusual and different from the rest of India. Cooking in Kerala is all about discoveries, aromas and colors. Kerala cuisine is very hot and spicy and offers several gastronomic opportunities to those willing to experiment with the local cuisine.

A tropical paradise of undulating palms and warm sandy beaches, Kerala is a narrow strip of coastal territory sloping down from the Western Ghats in a riot of green, luxuriant vegetation. Kerala is also one of the richest states in India with forests and plantations of rubber, cashew, and coconuts everywhere. The meeting place of many cultures, Hindu and Muslim, Christian and Jewish, Kerala has a particularly rich heritage of dance and drama and the people are among the most industrious and well educated in the country.

Seafarers have also played an important role in shaping the history, socio-cultural background and food of Kerala. Christianity came here as early as AD 400, and Judaism and Islam also came via the sea. Over the years, voyagers from Greece, Italy, China France and Africa came to the spice coast of Malabar. Kerala's cuisine with its fascinating array of meat and fish dishes is a constant reminder of the many foreigners who once came here. Kerala' s long stretch of coast and rich sea life ensure that seafood, coconut and other such things are a part of the Malayali kitchen.

Rice, or rather unpolished rice, is the main food of the Keralite. Aside from the boiled product eaten as a staple, there is also a wide range of snacks and breakfast fare made of the cereal. Pounded into flour, it gives shape to the bamboo formed puttu, the round spongy vattayappam, the lacy edged palappam, the pancake-like kallappam, the sweet uniappam, the idiappam that looks like fine noodles, and the stuffed ball called kozhikotta. And then, there is the pathiri, chapatti-like bread that can be made into a plain thin one called vatipathiri, a box type pettipathiri and a sweet cake-Chattipathiri. Pathiris are also stuffed with beef, chicken or mutton and fried, or steamed when filled with fish.

From time immemorial, the coconut tree has been an integral part of life for the people of Kerala and nowhere is this more visible than in their food. These people put to good use whatever the land offers and the result is a marvellous cuisine that is simple yet palate tickling.

Except for the Nambudiris who are strict vegetarians, Hindus of other castes eat both meat and fish as a matter of course. However, they do not serve non-vegetarian food on important days, though for the other communities no festive occasion is complete without it. It is the influence of the foreigners that, unlike most of the other parts of the country, beef is quite popular in cuisine of Kerala.

The high ranges of Kerala boast of vast plantations of cardamom, pepper, nutmeg, tea and coffee while in its lower elevations there are clove, ginger and turmeric. The midlands have paddy fields, tapioca, all sorts of hardy vegetables such as yam, narrow, gourd, drumstick, etc. and a huge collection of tropical fruits-banana, jackfruit, mango, pineapple and cashew. In the lowlands, cultivation is mainly that of coconut trees and paddy.