Name: How A Traditional Mezban Feeds 40,000 People In Chittagong, Bangladesh | Big Batches | Insider Food
Uploaded: 2025-05-23T06:26:24.000Z
Duration: 6 min 37 s
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These chefs are cooking a traditional mezban, a feast with multiple dishes for 40,000 people in Chittagong, Bangladesh.

These spicy beef stews take Chef Faridur Rahman Milon and his team four days to make and require 10,000 kilograms of beef and 20,000 kilograms of rice.

Adverbs of degree

And even with 30 years of experience, he still has challenges.

We visited Chittagong to see how a mezban is made in such big batches.

A mezban is the ultimate communal feast and celebration for special occasions like birthdays, marriages, religious holidays, and death anniversaries in Chittagong.

Preparations begin with loading 200 pots, known as dags, onto bikes and transporting them to the kitchen, along with 8,000 kilograms of wood.

Inside, prep workers hand-slice onions, ginger, gourds, green peppers, and coriander leaves and toast garam masala.

Across the kitchen, another team gets to work, butchering 50 cows for five hours, separating the meat by cut.

Once separated, it's weighed and brought to the kitchen.

The lean cuts of meat are used in the popular spicy beef stew known as mezbani goshd.

To make it, several dags are filled with 60 kilograms of beef and water.

Onions, turmeric, red pepper, coriander, cumin, ginger paste, garlic paste, cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, salt, and garam masala are added into every pot.

One kilogram of Kevra water is also added, giving the dish a sweet, fruity flavor and a rose-like scent.

Finally, one kilogram of soybean oil and handfuls of green chilies are added.

For two hours, the stew is constantly stirred with a ladle known as a katikati, so the ingredients don't stick.

Once everything's cooked, the pots are moved and left to simmer for another 15 to 20 minutes.

The larger pieces of meat and cow shanks are used to make nolar jhol, a bone broth soup.

The large pieces are coated with turmeric and chili and added into a dish called a nolar.

The nolar jhol is a dish made with a bag full of water, which also has the same spice mixture used to make mezbani gosht.

Unlike the mezbani gosht, nolar jhol uses more water and takes over five hours to cook.

The large bones also add a more intense flavor and collagen to the soup.

The last dish the kitchen prepares is chonar dal, a hearty lentil curry.

Small chunks of meat are cooked with bottle gourd and water in a bag until they are 80% done.

When the gourd is slightly soft, large baskets of lentils are added into the pot and left to boil.

After five hours of cooking, the dish is ready to be served.

The meal wouldn't be complete without rice, which is served with every dish.

The pot is moved to a smaller fire and covered with charcoal so any remaining water evaporates.

At night, the streets fill with crowds queuing for a free meal.

Every meal starts with steaming plates of rice, followed by beef and curries that are also served on shared tables.

What I like the most about Teresangar is that we all get together in a happy atmosphere.

The word julus is an ancholic word for us.

The final bite is usually the bone marrow, which is tapped out.

While this festival is full of joy, it's also a day of remembrance for the dead.

Once everyone is finished, the tables are cleaned and more groups are let in.

This is the last meal of the day.      Because the kitchen prepares more food than it can serve, all of the leftovers are donated to the local orphanage.