Long before “organic”, “local”, or “sustainable” became fashionable food vocabulary, communities across Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, and Sikkim were already living through those ideas quietly, through necessity and inherited ecological knowledge.

For many families here, food is a way of remaining connected to the land.

The first thing Sumi Borah remembers about home is not a particular dish. It is the smell.

Smoke is drifting from the kitchen fire. Fermented bamboo shoots rest in jars for months. Fresh herbs drying near the window after being collected from nearby forests. Pork hanging above the stove slowly absorbing woodsmoke while rice simmered below.

“In our home, the kitchen was always active in some way,” Sumi says. “Something was always being smoked, boiled, dried, or preserved.”

When The Better Indiasat down with Sumi and her mother to talk about food from Northeast India, the conversation moved quickly beyond recipes. It became a discussion about forests, seasons, memory, migration, and survival, all the things that quietly shape kitchens across the region.

Because in much of Northeast India, food has never existed separately from the land. But to speak of "Northeastern cuisine" is, in many ways, a simplification. The region is home to hundreds of Indigenous communities, each with its own food traditions, ingredients, and cooking techniques shaped by local landscapes.

 While recipes differ across states and communities, they are united by a shared philosophy of cooking with seasonal produce, preserving what nature provides, and passing culinary knowledge from one generation to the next.

“For people in Northeast India, food has always been deeply connected to nature and the land around us,” Sumi says. “Growing up, I never saw ingredients as something that only came from supermarkets or packaged shelves. A lot of our food came directly from forests, rivers, kitchen gardens, or nearby farms.”

Across Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, and Sikkim, traditional food cultures evolved through close observation of rain, rivers, forests, hills, and difficult terrain. Long before sustainability became a global lifestyle conversation, communities here were already living through local, seasonal, low-waste food systems because there was little other choice.

“People would go out and collect wild herbs, leafy greens, bamboo shoots, medicinal plants, or seasonal vegetables depending on what nature was offering at that time of the year,” Sumi says.

“That is how people cooked,” she says. “You cooked what was available.”

Recipes carried through memory

Some of Sumi’s earliest memories revolve around smoked pork with fermented bamboo shoot — one of the most recognisable dishes across many Northeastern homes.

The preparation in her house remains uncomplicated even today. Smoked pork is boiled until slightly tender before fermented bamboo shoot, ginger, king chilli, salt, and water are added to the pot. The dish is then left to simmer until the meat softens completely.

“There are no heavy spices in it,” Sumi says. “The smoked meat and bamboo shoots naturally create rich flavours.”

Her mother still prepares bamboo shoots in large batches during the harvesting season. Fresh bamboo is cleaned, sliced, and fermented naturally before being stored for months.

“In monsoon season, those preserved bamboo shoots become very important,” Sumi says. “That is when you understand why preservation became such a central part of the cuisine.”

The same bamboo appears in another family staple, bamboo shoot chicken, where chicken is........

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