Adhirasam

Adhirasamis a traditional sweet dish which will be done for most of the festivals. For auspicious and even for inauspicious occasions, adhirasam is one of the main dish. Learning to make adhirasam is one of the mandatory requirement for all Indian Women especially Southern part of India. Even for Tamil Weddings, Adhirasam is one of the seer dishes which is mandatory from bride side. Making adhirasam at home is simple but we need little patience to fry the adirasams one by one carefully. Lets see how to make the delicious adhirasam at home with step by step photos and instructions.

Adhirasam
My grand daughters (twins) enjoyed adhirasam and they keep asking for more. Home made Adhirasam will surely be less oily compared to store bought adhirasams and they are little crispier too when eaten fresh.

Preparation and Yield:
Preparation time 12 Hours
Cooking Time 20 mins
Yield 12 Adhirasams
Subbalakshmi Renganthan Indian Sweets

Adhirasam
Ingredients:
Raw Rice 1 Cup
Jaggery 1 Cup
cardamom Powder 1/2 Teaspoon
Cooking Oil 1/4 Litre for deep frying

Method for making rice flour:

1. Rinse the raw rice in water atleast couple of times. Then add fresh water to the raw rice to soak them well and leave the raw rice to get soaked for atleast an hour. After an hour, drain the water from rice and spread it in a clean white towel to get it dried.

It could take atleast 5 to 10 minutes to get dried. If you take the rice in your hand, you should feel damp in your palm or fingers. If you are going to prepare larger quantities then drying of rice takes more time. Also, if we are going to grind the rice in a mixer, then we should grind it immediately after the rice got dried. Immediately grinding the dried rice in a mixer helps us to get more smooth rice flour without any lumps. If we leave the dried rice for a long time, then we would not get smooth flour in the mixer. But if we are planning to grind it in a rice mill, then it should not be a problem.

Grind the rice in the mixer to a nice powder. Normally we don't get any lumps. But we should sieve it couple of time to get a smooth rice flour. If we get any lumps while we sieve, again add the lumps of rice flour to the mixer and grind it again to a smooth flour and again sieve it.

Repeat the sieve process again and again till we get a smooth and nice rice flour. Now our rice flour is ready

Method for making Adhirasam:

1. Add jaggery in a pan with 1/2 cup of water and when it dissolves, strain the jaggery water to remove dirt and sand

Again boil the jaggery water and keep stirring it until the jaggery comes to stone consistency. This means when we take a drop of jaggery juice and pour it in water, it should not dissolve rather we should be able to make a ball out of it. It should not be hard as well. This is the right consistency. When you allow the syrup more than the stone consistency, then the adhirasam will become hard. If the syrup is taken before the stone consistency, then the adhirasam will break while frying. You should be very careful at this stage.

When you take the jaggery syrup from the bowl, you should be able to roll into a ball and also when you drop it it should make a sound while hitting the ground / plate. This is the right consistency of jaggery syrup. Now remove the jaggery from flame and add to the wet rice powder and mix it well along with cardamom powder.

Mix well, so that no lumps are formed till you get chappathi dough consistency. Now the adhirasam mixture is ready for preparation.. Keep this adhirasam mixture aside for at least one day. The next day, again knead the adhirasam dough and if you feel it is too sticky, you can add little rice flour or if the dough is too dry you can sprinkle little butter milk and knead it well.

Heat required oil in a heavy bottomed pan. Make a small ball of the adhirasam mixture and place it in a oil greased plastic paper. I have cut a zipper cover into 2 sheets. I have placed the small ball of adhirasam dough in the center of 1 zipper cover which is greased with oil. Cover that with another half of the zipper cover

Using a flat bottomed bowl or lid press the ball to make it flat. We need slightly thicker adhirasam so do not press too much.

Grease your fingers with oil and gently take out the pressed adhirasam from zipper cover and drop it in hot oil. Keep the flame in medium and allow the adhirasam to get fried in oil. We have to fry the adhirasams one by one only. If we add more adhirasam to the oil, the chances of breaking is too high.

When the adirasam gets cooked on the bottom side, it will automatically rises up in the oil. Gently using a spatula turn the adhirasam to the other side and allow it to cook for another minute. Then hold your spatula on your left hand and take out the adhirasam from oil. Using another flat spatula, gently press the center of the fried adhirasam ti squeeze out the excess oil from the adhirasam. Do not press too much otherwise the adhirasam will break. So gently do it. Repeat the above steps for the rest of mixture and fry all the adhirasams

The Delicious Adhirasam is ready for Neivedhyam for Thirukarthigai/Karthigai deepam as well as for serving.

Note : If Adhirasam is getting split while frying, then its an indication that you have added more jaggery. Add one or two more table spoon of rice flour and mix it and try again.

Adhirasam