- Narrator: This is the Shantivan Complex,
a mega kitchen in Mount Abu, Rajasthan
belonging to the spiritual organization Brahma Kumaris.
The kitchen is run entirely by volunteers,
who cook enough food to feed 40,000 people a day.
The operation spans four floors
and includes 14 dining halls,
which can seat 15,000 people at a time.
We visited the complex during
a special celebration called "Baba Milan"
to see how it prepares these meals
in such big batches.
Work in the kitchen begins at 5:30 a.m.
with hundreds of volunteers
cutting vegetables
and peeling steamed potatoes by hand.
During Baba Milan,
2,500 volunteers prep
and cook the festival meals.
But that isn't something Bhanu Prakash,
who's head of the bread department,
is worried about.
- Narrator: The cut vegetables
are loaded onto crates
and wheeled into the main kitchen,
where they're washed again
in large metal containers and strained.
All of the vegetables
the kitchen uses are seasonal
and bought directly from farms.
And the food is prepared
following the sattvic diet,
or the yogi diet,
which is rooted in ayurvedic practices.
Today the chefs are cooking rajma,
vegetable sabzi, chapatis, and theplas.
While most of the prep work is done by hand,
some vegetables are processed using machines.
Crates of tomatoes are pureed
and spinach is chopped finely.
On the other side of the kitchen,
another team uses that tomato puree
to make a sauce.
They pour five liters of peanut oil
into a giant pot.
Then they mix in whole wheat flour,
curry powder, handfuls of cumin seeds,
asafoetida,
bay leaves,
and chili powder.
Buckets of pureed tomatoes are poured inside
and tossed together with garam masala,
a common Indian spice mixture.
The chefs then scoop the sauce
out with buckets
and place it into large metal containers
so it can be delivered
to another section of the kitchen.
The tomato sauce is rolled
to Chef Nilesh Bhai,
who has been working here for 17 years
and is in charge of making rajma,
a curried dish made with kidney beans.
- Narrator: He soaks the kidney beans
for 10 to 12 hours before boiling them
in this pot for three hours.
Once they're cooked,
Nilesh uses a small scooper to examine
the beans' tenderness
and gauge the broth's consistency.
When the beans pass the test,
he tips the pot and scoops in 400 kilograms
of the tomato sauce.
He then fills the pot with more water
so it achieves the same consistency
it had before the tomatoes.
This is something Nilesh
determines with his eye.
On the side, he mixes oil,
cumin, coriander, garam masala,
asafoetida, gram flour,
and chili powder into a bucket.
He then pours this into the pot
and adds salt.
After he adds the first round of spices,
he tastes the rajma
and decides if it needs more flavor.
Once Nilesh approves of the taste,
he mixes in finely chopped spinach.
- Narrator: Cooking all of this food requires
an immense amount of energy.
Since 1990, the kitchen
has used a concentrated solar array
on top of its roof to heat water
and generate steam,
which can be used to cook
most of the food the kitchen makes.
The cooked rajma
is drained through a spigot
into smaller containers,
which are then covered
and wheeled to the dining halls.
One of the most important dishes
made in the kitchen is sabzi,
a mixed-vegetable dish that varies
depending on the vegetables available that day.
Cooks heat oil in a massive pot
along with cumin seeds,
curry leaves, and asafoetida.
Next, they add turmeric, cut chilies,
and chopped bottle gourd.
They mix everything together before
adding in chopped potatoes,
scarlet gourd, and cauliflower.
Then they add water
and season the mix
with salt and chili powder.
Next come green beans,
a pot full of tomato sauce, peas,
cut green bell peppers,
and shredded carrots.
It's finished off with a generous amount of salt.
Like every other dish this kitchen serves,
the vegetables are taste-tested
and seasoned accordingly
during the cooking process.
Once the chef at hand gives
the flavor a thumbs-up,
the mixture is scooped back into the metal pots
and wheeled to the dining halls.
Bread is essential to every meal.
The bread department at the Shantivan Complex
can make up to 26,000
flatbreads every hour.
To do so, bakers first pour 50-kilogram
bags of flour into mechanical sifters
to remove large clumps of flour.
- Narrator: The sifted flour
is then taken to mechanical mixers,
where different types of dough are made.
Today, the bread department
is making two types of flatbreads,
chapatis and theplas.
The thepla dough is made by combining water,
whole-wheat flour, turmeric,
chili powder, ground spinach,
and fenugreek seed.
Once mixed, the dough
is wheeled to volunteers,
who use their hands to roll it
into palm-sized balls.
These balls are then brought
to a team of 200 rollers,
who flatten them so they can be cooked.
Chefs rub the flattened theplas with ghee
and slap them onto flat griddles to cook.
Together, this team can make 20,000 theplas an hour.
On the other side of the bread department,
machines are used to make chapatis without fillings.
The dough is top-loaded into the machines,
which chop, flatten,
and bake it into crispy chapatis.
- Narrator: Like everything else that gets cooked here,
the breads are placed inside metal containers
to keep warm
and wheeled to the dining halls for guests.
In the dining halls,
the rajma is served with rice, chapatis,
and bhindi masala,
a side dish made of okra and spices.
During Baba Milan, the hindu god Shiva,
who is recognized as the father of souls,
is believed to visit practitioners.
- Narrator: Many of the devotees
have been coming here for years.
- Narrator: Imbuing the food
with positive intention
is one of the biggest responsibilities
during the cooking process.