Chettinad Paal Paniyaram Recipe / Authentic Chettinad Paal Paniyaram

Chettinad Paal Paniyaram

Serves - 6 Persons

Ingredients

Raw Rice – 1 cup

Urad dal – ¾ cup

Milk( full fat) – 750 ml

Coconut Milk – 250 ml

Sugar – 1 and 1/4 cup ( +/- according to taste)

Cardamom Powder – less than ¼ tsp

Oil to deep fry

Authentic Chettinad Paal Paniyaram

Method

1.      Soak raw rice and urad dal for atleast 4 hours.

2.      Boil milk and allow it to cool, add coconut milk, sugar and cardamom powder to the cool milk and stir well. Set aside the prepared milk.

3.      Grind the soaked rice and urad dal together to a smooth and thick batter by adding very little water.

4.      Do not let the ground batter to ferment, it needs to be immediately fried.

5.      Heat oil in a deep pan on a medium heat. Add very small dollops of batter to the hot oil by using teaspoon or fingers. Fry the paniyarams on medium heat for 2 mins.( the fried paniyaram needs to be white in color, not golden brown).

6.      Keep a large bowl of hot water by the side. Drain the fried paniyaram from the oil and add it to the water in the bowl. Let paniyaram soak in water for few seconds and drain paniyaram from water and add it to the prepared milk.

7.      Serve the Chettinad Paal paniyaram warm or cold as preferred.

Paal Paniyaram Recipe

Chefs tips:

1. Traditionally Paniyaram batter is dropped into oil using coconut shell. A hole is put inside a fully scrapped coconut shell, paniyarm batter is filled inside coconut shell and gently shaken above the hot oil, so small dollops of batter are dropped into hot oil. Since its hard process these days, a very small amount of batter is taken in hand or tsp and tiny dollops of batter is dropped in hot oil.

2. Paal Paniyaram is a simple comfort sweet dish of chettinad. Traditionally no nuts or saffron are added to this recipe but I find many such unauthentic recipes on internet, just to make clear paal paniyaram doesn't require any fancy toppings.