Bangladesh Cuisine, Food & Recipes

Bangladeshi meals almost always include plain white rice or bhat. Fried rice, in the forms of polao and biriyani, are mostly eaten on special occasions.

Bangladeshi cuisine varies between very sweet and mild to extremely spicy. Even tourists from South East Asia and India find the food spicy. It resembles North East Indian and South East Asian food more closely than that of any other part of the Subcontinent, most likely due to geographic and cultural proximity. The most important flavours in Bangladeshi cuisine are garlic, ginger, lime, coriander, cumin, turmeric and chili. In sweet dishes, cardamom and cinnamon are amongst the natural flavours.

Fresh sweet water fish is one of its most distinctive features; Bengal's countless rivers, ponds and lakes teem with innumerable varieties of fish such as rohu, hilsa, koi or pabda. Almost every village across Bengal has aquaculture ponds, and at least one meal a day will include a fish dish.

The variety of fruits and vegetables on offer is amazing. A plethora of gourds, roots & tubers, leafy greens, succulent stalks, lemons and limes, eggplants, onions, plantain, beans, okra, banana tree stems and flowers, jackfruit and pumpkins are available the produce markets.

Chicken & mutton are always the favorite meat items across Bangladesh. Beef is more popular now & often cooked in nawabi style, influenced by Awadhi cuisine. Pork is eaten mainly by anglo-Christian community & tribal people.