Tihar (Deepawali) Foods: Sel Roti, Sweets & Sagun

Tihar (also called Deepawali or Nepali Diwali) is really five separate festivals stacked back to back: Kaag Tihar for the crows, Kukur Tihar for dogs, Gai Tihar for cows (and Laxmi Puja the same evening), Govardhan Puja and Mha Puja, then Bhai Tika on the last day for brothers and sisters. Every single one has its own small offering, and almost all of them run through the kitchen.

If you grew up with this festival, you already know the smell that hangs over a Tihar house: mustard oil heating up for sel roti, incense drifting from the puja room, and someone shouting that the diyo oil is running low again. If this is your first Tihar away from Nepal, this guide is the shortcut version of what your family would be doing right now.

For the general pantry side of things (rice, lentils, spices you'll need across all five days) our Nepali & Indian grocery delivery page covers the basics that ship anywhere in the country.

Ask any Nepali what food means Tihar and the answer is instant: sel roti. It's a sweet, ring-shaped rice bread, deep fried until the outside is a deep amber and the inside stays soft and slightly chewy, and it's the one dish nobody skips no matter how far from home they are.

The batter is simple in theory: soaked and ground rice (or rice flour if you're skipping the soak-and-grind step), a little sugar, ghee, milk, banana, and warm spices like cardamom. The hard part is the ring itself, pouring a thin stream of batter into hot oil in one continuous loop without it breaking apart. Everyone's grandmother has a technique and everyone's grandmother insists hers is the only correct one.

We've written a full breakdown of the batter ratios and frying temperature in our sel roti recipe, and a separate ingredient-focused guide on sel roti at home if you want to understand what each ingredient is doing before you start pouring. Either way, start with good rice flour. A gritty or old batch will crack in the oil instead of holding its ring.

Sagun is the small ceremonial plate given on auspicious occasions, and Tihar (especially Bhai Tika) is peak sagun season. A proper sagun plate usually has a boiled egg, a piece of dried fish or meat, fruit, sel roti, and something sweet, arranged with a tika and a few strands of marigold.

The sweets side of sagun is where a lot of Nepali-Canadian households improvise, and that's fine. Traditional Nepali sweet shops aren't on every corner here, so many families lean on Indian mithai instead: barfi, laddu, and rasgulla all show up on Tihar tables now. If you want a primer on what's actually available and how to serve it, our rasgulla and Indian sweets guide covers the common options.

Dried meat is the other sagun staple that travels surprisingly well. A little sukuti on the plate is a nod to the dried buff or mutton that would traditionally sit next to the egg, and it keeps for weeks in the fridge, which matters when you're prepping five days of food.

The third day of Tihar is Laxmi Puja, when homes are cleaned top to bottom, doors are propped open, and a trail of diyo (small oil lamps) leads from the street to the front door so Goddess Laxmi finds her way in. This is the night Nepali neighbourhoods actually glow.

A proper diyo set matters here more than people expect, since cheap ones tip over or burn unevenly. A diyo set with enough weight to sit steady on a windowsill or doorstep makes the whole evening easier, and if you're doing a bigger spread, garlands of sayapatri (marigold) around the door and window frames are the other half of the look.

For the actual puja, most families use a proper thali to hold the tika, rice, flowers and offerings. A brass puja thali is the standard, and pairing it with a ready-made Laxmi puja samagri set saves you from realizing halfway through the ritual that you're missing three ingredients. Light a stick of dhoop alongside it and the room starts to smell exactly like it should.

The final day, Bhai Tika, is sisters blessing brothers with a seven-colour tika and a garland, in exchange for gifts and a promise of protection. It's also, unsurprisingly, another full feast: sel roti again, fruit, sweets, and often a full meal afterward that looks a lot like the everyday dal bhat most households eat, just with more dishes on the table.

By this point in the week most kitchens are running low on the basics too. If your rice, ghee, or spice stock got wiped out over five days of cooking, it's worth restocking your rice & flour shelf and your spices & masala before the next festival hits, since Nepal's calendar doesn't leave much of a gap between celebrations.

Not every city has a Nepali grocery store, and even fewer have one that stocks diyo, sayapatri, and puja samagri sets in the same aisle as rice flour. Danphe Stores ships all of it out of our shop at 3634 East Hastings St in Vancouver, with standard delivery of $5 to $10 landing in 5 to 10 business days across all 10 provinces and 3 territories, and free shipping once your order passes $35 within central Metro Vancouver.

If you're local, same-day delivery in Metro Vancouver is available by calling 236-471-5891, which is genuinely useful the night before Laxmi Puja when you realize you're one diyo short. Everyone else, order early. Tihar has a fixed date and the postal system doesn't care that Laxmi is coming on Thursday.