Indian Temple’s and their unique tastes

Any typical Indian temple, whether in a city or village, will have its own kitchen where these meals are cooked, sanctified and served, and offered free of charge or for a small token price. But these are no ordinary meals.

What sets temple cuisine apart is the taste, which is unique to each location and notoriously hard to replicate. In fact, many established chefs have tried to offer temple cuisine in their high-end restaurants, but ultimately failed to generate the same magic.

Only local ingredients are used, while the recipes are based on Ayurvedic principles. This makes temple cuisine a live repository of traditional crops and spices. Some temples even use water from a spring or well on the premises, while farms located nearby traditionally offer part of their harvest to the temple’s presiding deity.

The scale is also remarkable, with some temples serving thousands of visitors in a single day. The Shri Saibaba temple in Shirdi, for instance, dishes out as many as 40,000 meals per day, every day, all year long.

he tradition is rooted in an ancient Indian mythological story in which Lord Vishnu the preserver — a god of the holy Hindu trinity — set out on a long pilgrimage.As part of his journey he took a dip in the waters of seaside temple Rameshwaram in southern India, meditated at Badrinath Temple in the north, visited Dwarka Temple in the west and dined at the Jagannath Temple on the eastern coast.The food he ate was cooked by his consort, Hindu goddess Lakshmi, and thus deemed divine, setting the stage for a ritual that continues to this day in which offerings known as prasad are made to a temple’s presiding deity and distributed to devotees.

Here’s a look at a few of most famous temples dishing out tasty, nutritious food to the masses.

Located in the coastal eastern Indian state of Odisha in the city of Puri, Jagannath Temple feeds an impressive 25,000 devotees per day, but that figure can balloon to one million during festivals.The 12th-century temple offers 56 varieties of food items. There are 40 different vegetable and dal (lentil) dishes, six rice dishes and 10 traditional sweets, like peethas, payesh, rasagola and malpua. And it’s served six times a day, cooked up in one of the largest kitchen complexes in the world.

Free meals, known as langar, are served at all Sikh shrines, or gurudwaras, not just in India but all over the world.The tradition was implemented by the first guru of the Sikh faith, which emphasizes a concept of selfless service to the community.The langar at Sri Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar in the north Indian state of Punjab — popularly known as the Golden Temple — feeds up to 100,000 people daily. Visitors of any faith, rich or poor, can receive the simple hot meals that are handed out almost completely by volunteers.

Tirupati Balaji Temple — or Venkateswara Swamy temple — is located in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.According to tradition, Lord Venkateswara — a form of Vishnu — appears in the temple every day, so it is the devotees’ duty to feed him.Tirupati serves “annadanam,” a Sanskrit word that refers to the offering or sharing of food, to an estimated 80,000 pilgrims every day.

As devotees leave the main temple after offering prayers, the prasad, or offerings, are distributed. This includes a smaller version of the laddu and rice preparations of the day, which are ladled into leaf bowls.