Take A Look At Stephen Colbert’s Dalliance With Indian Cooking On The Late Show

Indian food has been heavily featured in the Western media of late. First, Aziz Ansari, an Indian origin American actor documented his food journey though South India using Instagram, a story that was picked up by various western news organisations like First We Feast and Elite Daily.

More recently, Stephen Colbert, the host of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert devoted a segment of an episode to Indian cooking, where he visited Indian immigrant Yamini Joshi’s house to cook a meal. There was a deeper meaning to Colbert’s visit; he used it to respond to political parties suggesting that immigrants be prevented from entering the US, by showing us how immigrants can teach Americans valuable skills.

“What do I need to know about Indian food?” Colbert wonders just after he steps into Joshi’s Queens home. “All I know is that it’s spicy and you’re not allowed to eat cow.”

He then goes on to wander into her kitchen and ask her whether all Indian spices are named after Game of Thrones characters (facepalm) and whether if he’s not allowed to eat butter he can eat ghee (double facepalm). Eventually, Joshi tells him to concentrate and to ‘stop having fun’; read – stop playing the fool, which he does aside from breaking out into a ‘Bollywood’ dance midway through the cook.

Bollywood dancing aside, Colbert does manage to learn how to chop long beans, use a pakkad and (almost) break open a coconut. Finally, he sits down to enjoy a meal that he helped make, commenting “holy shanti is that good.” He then thanks Joshi saying “thank you or teaching me that there are no cultural differences that cannot be bridged by a giant stick of butter.”

Are you entertained by the sneak peek we’ve shared? Then take a look at the full video below!