It started with one jar that never made it to the market.
Every winter the terrace filled up with bamboo trays — radish drying, pumpkin badi curing, mustard seed roasting. Neighbours started asking for a jar. Then their relatives in Kathmandu. Then a grocery shop in Janakpur. 28 years later the recipe has not changed once, only the number of trays — and the number of women who make them. Every person on the SBP team today is a woman, from the one who buys the radish in the field to the one who seals the last jar.
What we refuse to use
- Sodium benzoate & other preservatives
- Artificial colour of any kind
- Synthetic flavour or essence
- Palm oil & refined blends
What goes in instead
- Cold-pressed mustard oil
- Rock salt & sun-drying
- Stone-pounded whole spices
- Time — the only real preservative
Small batch, on purpose
A batch is 30–40 jars. When it is gone, it is gone until the next sun-dry cycle. That is why some items show Notify me instead of Add to cart.
Every jar passes through her hands
SBP is made start to finish by women — buying the raw material in the field, pounding the masala, turning the trays in the sun, sealing the jar and sending it out. 5 steps, no machines in between.
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Sourced by the women themselves
Straight from the field
The women buy raw material directly from the farms and fields around Dhanusha — no middleman, no cold store. Radish, pumpkin, mango and lapsi reach the kitchen the same morning they are picked.
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No machine touches the masala
Prepared by hand, the traditional way
Washed, cut, mixed and measured by hand. Whole spices are roasted on an iron pan and pounded on the silauto — a grinding machine heats the spice and kills the aroma, a stone does not.
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Sun only · no dehydrator, no oven
Dried in the open, under control
Adauri and kumhrauri are laid out on the terrace or on clean covered ground and dried in the sun for three to seven days — turned by hand twice a day, and brought in the moment the weather turns.
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Batch dated by hand
Packed by the same hands
Sterilised glass, filled by hand, weighed, sealed and labelled with the batch date — by the same women who sourced and cooked it. Nothing is added to make it last longer.
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Same hands, field to doorstep
To the shop shelf, or to your door
Cartons go out to partner stores across Nepal, and every online order is packed and dispatched from the same room — so the jar that reaches you was handled start to finish by the women who made it.
Start with the jar everyone reorders
One spoon of mixed achar and dal-bhat is done. That is where most people begin.
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