Pongal 2026: 9 traditional South Indian dishes for Pongal celebrations

Pongal is the harvest festival of Southern India and this year it will be celebrated on 14 January. It is a festival of heartfelt thanksgiving to the Sun God, the earth, and the cattle for abundance and prosperity. Celebrated in South India, the festival revolves around kolams, rituals and traditional feast. Here are a few traditional South Indian dishes that make Pongal celebrations even more delicious.

It is one of the most important dishes and is made with moong dal, rice, jaggery, ghee, cashews, raisins, and aromatic cardamom. It is traditionally made outdoors in earthen pots.

It is the savoury version of pongal, where rice and lentils are cooked in ghee along with black pepper, cumin, ginger, and curry leaves and is served with coconut chutney and sambar.

This version of pongal is made with rice, slow-cooked in milk until creamy and mildly sweet, and offered to the Sun God .

This is a popular South Indian dish made with urad dal batter, which is fermented and seasoned with spices like cumin, pepper and chilli, and then deep-fried in the form of doughnut until golden and served with sambar and chutney.

It is a lentil-based curry, where toor dal is cooked along with veggies in tamarind puree and is topped with a tempering of peanut oil, mustard seeds, curry leaves, and dried red chillies.

It is a traditional mixed vegetable dish made with French beans, moringa, carrot, raw banana, and ash gourd along with coconut, cumin, and curd.

It is a slow-cooked dessert made with milk, jaggery or sugar, rice, ghee, cashews, raisins, and cardamom powder.

It is a classic rice dish, made with leftover rice, cooked in a tempering of oil, mustard seeds, curry leaves, lentils, peanuts, turmeric powder, lemon juice and rinds.

It is also a rice dish that uses tamarind paste in a tempering of oil, peanuts, mustard seeds, curry leaves, jaggery, and dried red chilies, along with roasted spices, giving it a bold and flavorful taste.