Next: 17 to 20 Oct 2026
Durga Puja bhog
Bengal's great autumn festival, with khichuri bhog, labra and chutney cooked for the goddess and shared by all.
Spices for Durga Puja bhog
During Durga Puja, pandals serve bhog, the sanctified food offered to the goddess and then to the crowd. The classic is khichuri, rice and moong dal cooked with ginger, cumin, bay leaf, turmeric and ghee, with a mixed vegetable labra spiced with panch phoron and a tomato or tamarind chutney with raisins and dried dates. Sweets such as payesh and sandesh are scented with cardamom and sometimes with a few drops of rose or kewra water. Bengali bhog has no onion or garlic, so ginger and whole spices do the work.
The spices
Written by the EveryMasala desk with AI assistance. Background: "Durga Puja" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from place to place and family to family. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Panch phoron: Wiki-uk, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Bay leaf: Χρήστης:Andrikkos / The original uploader was Andrikkos at Greek Wikip, Public domain, source
- Ginger: Venkatx5, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Cardamom: Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0, source