English
বাংলা
The story
Mezban, from a Persian word for host, is Chattogram's way of feeding a crowd. Families hold one to mark a death or its anniversary, a birth, a new house or business, a wedding or simply to honour guests, and politicians have been known to throw one at election time. Hundreds or thousands of people sit down to white rice, a rich, red, fiery beef curry, chanar dal (lentils cooked with beef fat and bones) and, in many feasts, nolar kanji, a bone-marrow soup. Mentions of such feasts appear in Bengali literature of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and historians link the custom to the port's long contact with Arab and Persian traders.
What sets mezbani beef apart is scale and method as much as recipe. Meat from almost every part of the animal, including bone, fat and offal, goes into enormous pots set on makeshift wood or clay stoves, and teams of cooks led by baburchis who learned the trade from their fathers stir it for hours. The spice blend is the cook's signature. Recipes vary and many baburchis guard theirs, but mezbani masala is typically built from warm whole spices such as cumin, coriander, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, black pepper, nutmeg, mace and dried red chilli, dry-roasted and ground, used alongside plenty of onion, garlic, ginger and mustard oil.
From the 1960s the feast spread to Dhaka with Chattogram families, and restaurants in both cities now serve mezbani beef every day. To recreate it at home, many people buy a ready-ground mezbani masala, either from small Chattogram spice grinders and caterers or as a packaged blend. It is that masala, rather than the cooked curry, that travels best and that most online sellers offer.
How to spot the real Mezbani beef masala
A good mezbani masala is a fairly coarse, reddish-brown powder with a strong, roasted smell of cumin, cinnamon and clove as soon as the pack is opened; you should be able to pick out the warm sweetness of nutmeg and mace behind the chilli heat. A dull, dusty, mostly-chilli smell, a bright artificial red colour, or a powder that clumps with damp suggests stale stock, too much filler or poor storage. Read the ingredient list: it should name the spices and little else, without starch, flour or "permitted colour". There is no official standard for what goes into mezbani masala, so no blend is more authentic than another by law; judge it by aroma, a clear ingredient list and a named maker.
Buying tips
Ask the seller who blends the masala and where, whether it is made in small batches in Chattogram or packaged elsewhere, when it was ground, and what is in it. Ground spices lose aroma within months, so a recent grinding date matters more than a fancy label. A small pack for one or two kilos of beef lets you try a blend before buying more. If a seller offers cooked or frozen mezbani beef instead, ask how it is chilled and packed and how long it will be in transit; cooked meat is a risky item to send far without a cold chain.
Each Midmart shop charges its own delivery, so masala from one shop and satkora or chui jhal from another arrive as separate parcels with separate fees. Midmart never collects payment or handles the courier: you agree both with the seller directly. Midmart does not check what goes into any blend, so ask for the ingredient list before you order.
Keeping it fresh
Keep mezbani masala in an airtight glass jar or zip bag, away from heat, steam and light, and use a dry spoon. It is at its best within about three months of grinding and still usable for a few months more, though it gradually fades. For a big Eid batch, roast and grind only what you need and freeze the rest sealed.
Find Mezbani beef masala on Midmart
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Shops from where it is made
No shop from Chattogram is on Midmart yet.
Every shop on Midmart collects payment its own way and arranges its own delivery — Midmart never handles your money or your parcel. Delivery is charged per shop: order from three shops and you pay three delivery charges.
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