Makar Sankranti aka harvest festival will be celebrated across India on January 14, 2023, this year. Here are some of the special dishes prepared to celebrate this festival.
In Maharashtra, on Makar Sankranti, people give each other til-gur laddus and say “Til gul ghya ani goad goad bola,” which literally translates to ‘Accept these sweets and say good things.”
In Tamil Nadu, the harvest festival is called Pongal. The celebratory dish prepared for this day is sakkaraipongal, which is a concoction made from rice, moong dal, and jaggery with generous amounts of ghee and dry fruits.
A special dish prepared for the festival in Odisha, Arisa Pitha is made using rice flour, jaggery, and topped with sesame seeds. It is called Ariselu in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and Adhirasam in Tamil Nadu.
Ellu bella from Karnataka refers to the quintessential sesame seeds-jaggery mixture that is prepared along with finely-chopped dry coconut, skinned peanuts, and fried gram.
A delicacy of West Bengal, this one is a silky-smooth pudding made from rice, milk, and date palm jaggery, which are boiled together and reduced.
A Lohri-special (harvest festival) sweet in several parts of north India, this one refers to roasted sesame seeds set in jaggery syrup to form flat cakes aka barfi.