This is the largest free kitchen in the world.
Open 24 hours year-round,
this food hall feeds 100,000 people for free each day.
And on religious holidays, that number can double.
Just one of these huge bowls
is enough to feed around 10,000 people.
We visited Amritsar in India to find out
everything that goes into feeding such a large crowd
and to see just what it takes to make such big batches.
This is Harmandir Sahib,
often referred to as the Golden Temple.
It's the largest Sikh shrine in the world.
But despite being part of the holy site,
this kitchen doesn't discriminate.
The food is completely free to anyone
regardless of religion, gender, or ethnicity.
Narrator: Community kitchens, or langar,
have been popular across South Asia
since the birth of Sikhism.
And the langar at the Golden Temple
has been serving meals since 1577.
Each dish is cooked in giant metal vats.
Over 100 gas cylinders and huge piles of wood
are burned through every day to keep things running 24/7.
And there's only one short 30-minute break
in the cooking, from 4:30 to 5 a.m.
Thousands of vegetables have to be peeled and prepared
by volunteers before they're taken to be cooked.
And while the menu can vary depending on availability
or the donated vegetables that the kitchen may receive,
it is always vegetarian.
But keeping this many people fed
takes a lot of ingredients.
Narrator: If you've never heard the term "quintal" before,
it's 100 kilograms.
So that's a total of 2,000 kilos,
or 2 tonnes, of dal per day.
Narrator: That's over 375 kilos of onions
and 100 kilos of spices
every 24 hours, just for the dal.
To make it, chana dal, or split chickpeas,
and urad dal, or black lentils, are mixed together
and repeatedly washed.
They're then moved into even larger vats
and mixed with the onions, spices, salt,
and ghee, a clarified butter,
and cooked together.
The kitchen spends over $5,000 a day on ghee alone.
And it's not just the dal.
Each day, the kitchen offers the lentils,
a vegetable dish, bread, kheer,
rice, pickle, water, and tea.
Kheer is a sweet pudding made of rice, milk,
sugar, and almonds boiled together.
But one of the biggest demands on the kitchen is bread.
Unlike the huge vats that can be made in bulk,
each chapati needs to be rolled out
separately before cooking.
Once rolled, each one is hand coated in ghee
to add flavor and keep it from drying out.
To keep up with demand, the work is split
between machines and people cooking by hand.
Producing the bread alone takes 10 tonnes of flour a day.
[machines buzzing]
Narrator: And to keep this operation running smoothly,
it takes a lot of volunteers.
Narrator: This selfless service
is an important part of Sikhism.
Sewadars, or religious volunteers,
are key to keeping this operation running daily.
From peeling and chopping vegetables
and even donating food
to serving and cleaning,
almost everything is volunteer run.
Narrator: Using metal trays keeps waste to a minimum,
but it makes a lot of noise.
[metal plates clanging]
The scale of the kitchen has been constantly expanding
to accommodate more and more visitors each year.
20 years ago, the kitchen would use
3,500 kilos of flour per day.
But now that number has tripled.
It now costs over $4 million a year
to keep the kitchen running.
But with a constant stream of donations and support,
the langar has kept up with demand
no matter the number of visitors.
If you liked "Big Batches," please subscribe.
It's the best way to let us know
that you want more of the series.
And if you want more from me,
please check out my show, "Regional Eats."
We have five machines here,
The number of devotees may increase further in the coming years.
Sachkhand Sri Harmandir Sahib,
Sri Durbar Sahib, Sri Amritsar in Punjab
receives one-and-a-half to two lakh
devotees daily,
and almost all of the devotees enjoy the langar at Sri Guru Ramdas Langar.
We have about 400 employees working in the Langar Hall,
and thousands of devotees also offer their services here.
There is no limit to the number of pilgrims,
Each and every devotee always gets to eat the langar,
be it in day or at night.