Traditional recipes

Cooked rice soaked in water, often fermented overnight, with curd and tempering. Odisha's summer staple.

Toor dal cooked with vegetables and finished with a roasted cumin-chilli powder and ghee. Odisha’s everyday dal and part of the temple Mahaprasad.

Soft balls of fresh chhena cooked in light sugar syrup, usually a pale cream colour. A GI-tagged sweet tied to the Jagannath tradition.

Fresh chhena kneaded with sugar and semolina and baked until the outside caramelises. Odisha’s ‘burnt cheese’ sweet.

Rectangles of chhena and semolina, fried and soaked in sugar syrup until it forms a light crust. A speciality of Pahala and Puri.

Soft fried chhena dumplings soaked in syrup, a speciality of the town of Nimapada in Puri district.

Flattened, fried discs of chhena soaked in thickened, cardamom-scented milk. Offered at the Baladevjew Temple in Kendrapara.

Crisp, layered fried pastry glazed with sugar syrup, sold in the lanes around the Jagannath Temple and part of its dry prasad.

Mixed vegetables cooked lightly with very little oil and spice, sometimes finished with milk. A gentle, healthy Odia dish.

Fish in a sharp mustard paste sauce, often soured with tomato or mango. A classic of coastal Odisha.

A thin, everyday Odia fish curry with potatoes, cooked with panch phutana and a simple spice paste.

Prawns cooked with potato or pumpkin in a light, spiced gravy, a favourite along Chilika and the Odisha coast.

Mud crabs cooked in a thick onion, tomato and spice gravy, a speciality of the Chilika and coastal fishing villages of Odisha.

Odia goat curry with potatoes in a spiced onion gravy, the traditional Sunday lunch in many homes.

Fried fish simmered in a mildly spiced curd gravy, a festive dish of Odia homes.

Fish coated in mustard-coconut paste, wrapped in leaves and roasted or steamed so it cooks in its own juices.

A curry of mushrooms, especially paddy-straw mushrooms, with onion and potato. A monsoon favourite in Odisha.

Pointed gourd (parwal) and potatoes in a rich onion-tomato gravy, cooked for feasts and weddings across Odisha.

A thick mix of many seasonal vegetables and soaked pulses, cooked together with coconut and roasted spices for festive days.

Leafy greens stir-fried with garlic and dried chilli, the simple side that goes with pakhala and dal-rice in Odisha.

Sun-dried lentil dumplings (badi) fried and crushed with raw onion, garlic, chilli and mustard oil, eaten with pakhala.

Fried brinjal slices in spiced, tempered curd. A cooling side dish for Odia meals.

Fragrant sweet rice cooked in ghee with whole spices, cashews and raisins, part of the Mahaprasad of the Jagannath Temple.

Fried cubes of fresh chhena and potato in a spiced tomato gravy. Odisha’s home-style cottage cheese curry.

Crisp, chewy discs of rice flour and jaggery dough, coated in sesame and deep-fried. One of Odisha’s oldest festive pithas.

Fermented rice and urad batter with a coconut-jaggery filling, steamed in fresh turmeric leaves. The pitha of Prathamastami.

Soft steamed rice-flour dumplings with a sweet coconut, chhena or jaggery filling.

Thin, soft pancakes of fermented rice and urad dal batter, a common Odia breakfast eaten with dalma, ghuguni or jaggery.

A dense cake of fermented rice and urad batter with coconut and jaggery, slow-baked until its crust caramelises. The pitha of the Raja festival.

Semolina or wheat-flour shells filled with sweetened coconut and fried until golden.

Soft, lacy rice and coconut pancakes made on the new-moon day of Chitalagi Amavasya and offered to Lord Jagannath.

Soft urad dal vadas soaked in thin tempered curd, served with spicy potato curry and ghuguni. Cuttack’s favourite street food.

Crisp urad dal vadas served with a spicy yellow or white pea curry. A favourite Odia breakfast.

A sweet-sour chutney of tomatoes and dates, tempered with panch phutana, served at the end of Odia feasts.

A simple porridge of ragi (finger millet) flour cooked in water, a staple of tribal communities in Koraput and southern Odisha.

A cooling drink of ripe bael (wood apple) pulp, curd, jaggery and spices, made for Pana Sankranti, the Odia New Year.