Sattu Sharbat is the great thirst-quencher of the Mithila summer — a spoon or two of roasted-gram flour (sattu) whisked into cold water and drunk at once. It comes two ways: salty (namkeen), with black salt, roasted cumin, lemon and chopped green chilli or coriander; or sweet (meetha), with sugar or jaggery.
Cheap, filling and genuinely cooling, it is often called Bihar’s desi energy drink: a glass of sattu sees a field-worker through the hottest afternoon, and is now selling, rebranded, in the cities as a health food. The same roasted flour, mixed stiff rather than thin, becomes the filling of litti and the sattu paratha.