Short Eat · Tea-Shop Snack
Gulha
Photo: Xavier Romero-Frias / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0
These deep-fried dough balls are stuffed with smoked tuna and coconut — a filling that turns up in nearly every Maldivian snack.
Gulha are small round dumplings of dough filled with a mixture of smoked or cooked tuna, grated coconut, onion, and chili, then deep-fried until golden. They're a staple of hedhikaa, the tray of savory 'short eats' served at Maldivian tea shops (sai hotaa) every afternoon.
Why it's made this way: With reef tuna as the most abundant local protein and few other ingredients readily at hand on small islands, Maldivian cooks built an entire short-eats tradition around folding fish, coconut, and spice into fried dough.
Roughly what's in it
220kcal
7gprotein
24gcarbs
11gfat
Estimated per typical street-vendor portion — not lab-tested.
More from Maldives
Part of World of Street Food — 690 dishes from 118 countries.
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Photo credits.