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EveryCow

Festival dishes

Kheer and payasam

Rice slowly cooked in sweetened milk with cardamom: the pudding of offerings, birthdays and festival meals.

Kheer is rice simmered in milk until soft and creamy, then sweetened and scented with cardamom and saffron. In South India it is payasam or payasa, and the name covers versions made with vermicelli, lentils or jaggery. It is one of the most common foods offered at temples and served at festivals, birthdays and the first rice-eating ceremony of a child.

What goes in

Whole milk: 63%63%Short-grain rice: 13%13%Sugar or jaggery: 13%13%Ghee: 6%Cardamom, saffron, cashews, raisins: 6%5parts
  • Whole milk1063%, Simmered until reduced and creamy.
  • Short-grain rice213%, Washed and soaked.
  • Sugar or jaggery213%, Jaggery is added off the heat.
  • Ghee16%, For frying nuts and raisins.
  • Cardamom, saffron, cashews, raisins16%, The usual finish.

Rough parts by weight. The ring shows each input's share of the product.

Made step by step

Each drawing shows the operation for that step. Quantities and timings differ from house to house and herd to herd; this is one traditional way, in outline.

  1. Step 1: Boil Bring the milk to the boil in a heavy pan.
  2. Step 2: Cook Add the soaked rice and simmer, stirring often, until it is soft and the milk has thickened.
  3. Step 3: Cook Stir in sugar, or jaggery off the heat so the milk does not split.
  4. Step 4: Cook Fry cashews and raisins in ghee and pour them over with ground cardamom.
  5. Step 5: Serve Serve warm or chilled, or offer at the shrine first.
  6. Whole milk: 63%63%Short-grain rice: 13%13%Sugar or jaggery: 13%13%Ghee: 6%Cardamom, saffron, cashews, raisins: 6%
    Finished Kheer and payasam, by share.

Temple payasam

Many South Indian temples are known for their payasam. At the Krishna temple in Ambalappuzha, Kerala, palpayasam of rice, milk and sugar is cooked for hours in large vessels and given out as prasadam. In Puri, kheer is among the dishes offered to Jagannath. In Bengal, payesh with new rice and date-palm jaggery marks birthdays and the harvest month.

Under the moon

On Sharad Purnima, the full moon of the autumn month of Ashvin, many families in North and West India leave a bowl of kheer out in the moonlight overnight and eat it the next morning, a custom tied to the belief that the moon's rays that night are especially blessed. In Bihar and the Nepal Tarai, kheer sweetened with jaggery is cooked on Kharna, the second day of Chhath.

Where it is used

Temple prasadamBirthdaysFestival mealsSharad Purnima

The breeds behind it

VechurTiny cow of Kerala, kept by temples and families.Kasaragod DwarfSmall hill cow of northern Kerala.GirDairy breed kept in many temple gaushalas.SahiwalNorth Indian dairy breed.

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Sources and further reading

About this page

Original text and drawings by the EveryCow desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. The shares are a rough, illustrative ratio, not a recipe: every family and dairy makes it differently. If we have something wrong, tell us.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

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