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LoginDishes To Make With The Bengali Panch Phoron
6 Min
30/03/2026Chorchori, Shukto And More: Dishes To Make With The Bengali Panch Phoron
Chorchori, And More: Dishes To Make With The Bengali Panch Phoron
Shukto
Quick Summary
India is the spice hub (which attracted numerous colonisers), yet the West and the East capitalise and promote their own spice blends or lack thereof. So, here’s going desi and getting into the secret of the "can’t-put-my-finger-on-it flavour” in any Bengali recipe. Meet panch phoron, which appears in every home kitchen across West Bengal, Odisha, Assam, and Bangladesh, and is made with five (panch) fragrant kitchen spices.
Deep Dive
The five spices in a panch phoron blend are fennel seeds (mouri), fenugreek seeds (methi), mustard seeds (shorshe), nigella seeds (kalo jeere) and cumin seeds (jeere). Unlike many spice mixes, panch phoron is used whole rather than ground, which makes the masala evident in both texture and flavour. Bengali cooking features a special spice blend called bhaja moshla, and this whole spice blend follows the same logic. Panch phoron is a tadka, which is added to hot oil at the start of cooking, where the seeds crackle and release their essential oils. Here are some recipes that use it.
Shukto
Shukto is a classic Bengali recipe made with seasonal vegetables, loved for its subtle bitterness and usually eaten toward the beginning of a meal with steamed rice. It’s typically made with a mix of vegetables, like bitter gourd, drumsticks, sweet potato, raw banana, and eggplants, cooked into a light, mildly spiced gravy. The panch foron is what gives this otherwise plain dish a layered and irresistible flavour.
Amba Khatta
This sweet dish is from Odisha. It is a sweet-and-sour chutney made with raw mangoes, and especially popular in summer when mangoes are plentiful. Aside from the sour mangoes, the dish also has jaggery, which gives it that distinctive taste. Before the jaggery and raw mangoes go in, a panch foron tadka is added to release its sweet aroma. In Odia cuisine, ‘khatta’ broadly refers to tangy condiments that complete a meal by juxtaposing a sour element wth the sweet.
