There is a particular kind of cook that food media never covers. She has been making the same rajma for twenty years and it is better than most restaurants serve. Everyone in the family knows it. Nobody outside the family has ever heard of her.
Rasoi ke Sitare exists for exactly that person. It is one of our recurring contest properties inside the Delhi Foodiez community, built around home cooks rather than professionals, and it has no entry fee, no audition and no requirement that you own good equipment.
What it actually is
Rasoi ke Sitare is a recipe and food storytelling contest run inside the group, usually over a fixed window of ten days to a fortnight. You cook, you photograph, you post inside the group with the contest details, and a set of winners is announced at the end.
It sits alongside our other community properties. Zayka-e-Dilli is the larger online food festival and awards format, with multiple categories including a junior chef award for children. Jashne Swaad runs as seasonal editions with its own winner announcements. Between all of them we have run over a hundred contests inside the community.
Rasoi ke Sitare 2025, with Pansari Group
The edition ran from 24 March to 3 April 2025 in partnership with Pansari Group. Five best recipes were selected, each winning a Pansari gift hamper worth ₹400. Entries were open to any member of the group. The framing was deliberately plain: start cooking, clicking and winning.
Be honest about the prize
A ₹400 hamper is not why people enter, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise.
What people actually come for is the announcement. Winners get a designed creative with their name and photograph on it, posted to a community of 51,000 people. Their dish gets discussed. Their name gets tagged. For a home cook who has never been credited for the thing she is best at, that post is the entire point, and we have watched it matter far more than the hamper.
Several of the members who now get recognised in the group first appeared as contest winners. That is the pipeline working the way it is supposed to.
How to actually enter
The mechanics are simple, which is deliberate. Anything more complicated and the cooks we most want to hear from do not bother.
- Be a member of the Delhi Foodiez group. Joining is free and takes a minute.
- Watch for the contest announcement post. Every edition is announced inside the group with its dates and theme.
- Cook the dish yourself, at home. This is not a restaurant competition.
- Photograph it in daylight. Phone camera is fine. Near a window, no flash, plate wiped clean.
- Post inside the group within the contest window, following whatever the announcement asks for.
- Write something about the dish. Where the recipe came from, who taught you, why you make it. The storytelling is genuinely part of the judging.
The entries that win are rarely the fanciest dishes
People assume they need to attempt something elaborate. In practice a well-photographed everyday dish with a real story behind it consistently outperforms an ambitious dish photographed badly at night under a tubelight. Cook what you actually cook well, and shoot it before the family starts eating.
When the next one runs
Editions are announced inside the group rather than on a fixed calendar, because they are often built around a season or a partner. Festive periods and summer tend to be busy. The only reliable way to catch the next one is to be in the group and watching.
Brands: this is what a community activation looks like
Pansari, Raasiva and others have run contests inside Delhi Foodiez. Your product goes into real kitchens, real members cook with it, and the content that comes back is theirs rather than ours. DFZ Media has run 500+ campaigns on this model.
If you have been cooking well for years with nobody outside the house noticing, this is a low-effort way to change that. Join Delhi Foodiez, wait for the next announcement, and post the dish you are already good at. Winners and standout posts also get featured on our Community Wall with full credit.
