Small, tight-skinned and fiercely aromatic, hill garlic from the high slopes of Tamil Nadu has a punch that lowland bulbs simply cannot match. One clove perfumes a whole batch.
Source location
Tamil Nadu Highlands
Western Ghats, Tamil Nadu · 11.40°N, 76.70°E
Smaller bulbs, bigger soul
Highland garlic grows slowly in thin mountain soil, producing compact bulbs packed with allicin — the compound behind that warm, lingering heat. The cloves are fiddly to peel, but cooks across Tamil Nadu prize them precisely because a little goes a very long way.
Cured the old way
After lifting, the bulbs are sun-cured on raised mats for two to three weeks so the skins tighten and the flavour deepens. We buy only fully cured stock — no rushed, watery garlic that turns bitter when fried — and store it cool and dry so it keeps its bite right through the year.
Heat that belongs in a savoury sweet
Garlic in a snack sounds unusual until you taste poondu seeval, where the fried clove turns nutty and mellow against crisp rice flour. In our mixture, hill garlic is the backbone that makes every other spice stand up straighter.
City garlic is loud and then it is gone. Our hill garlic stays with you, like a good conversation.
Taste it in…
Garlic Mixture
A crunchy South-Indian mixture lifted by fried hill-garlic cloves — savoury, warming and dangerously moreish. Also try our Poondu Seeval (₹450).