Athirasam /Adirasam / Ariselu / Kajjaya – Sweet Recipe

This is a traditional south Indian sweet prepared for festivals diwali ,,  using rice flour and jaggery .For auspicious occasions, adhirasam is one of the main sweet . 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 adhirasam one by one carefully. Lets see how to make the delicious adhirasam at home

Cooking time: 30-45 minutes

• Raw rice -1 kg
• Jaggery – 3/4 kg
• Cardamom – 6 (remove the pods)
• Oil for deep frying

Method

• Wash and soak good, quality raw rice for two hours.
• Drain the water and spread it on a cloth and allow it to dry
• After 10 minutes, dry grind the rice well (should not be too nice or coarse) along with cardamom.
• Sieve it and keep it in a broad bowl.
• Grate jaggery
• Add just enough water to soak the jaggery and bring it to boil.
• Remove from the flame. Once the jaggery dissolves, filter and remove the. impurities.
• Boil the jaggery water until a soft-ball consistency is arrived at. Switch off the flame. (To check the consistency of jaggery you can take a cup of water and pour a teaspoon of jaggery into it. If a small ball can be made out of it, the consistency is right)
• Add the hot jaggery syrup, little by little, to the rice flour mix and mix well. Cover it with a lid and keep aside for five hours.
• Afterwards, knead the dough well with hands, cover it and keep for about 12 hours or overnight at room temperature.
• On the second day take the dough and 1 knead again. Divide it into small thick balls.
• Heat oil in a thick-bottomed pan and once the oil is hot, turn the flame to medium.
• Grease a banana leaf with ghee and flatten the ball with hands.’
• Take the flattened dough from the’ leaf and fry it in the oil.
• Fry both sides till it turns brown.
• Remove from oil and place on an oil paper so that the excess oil is absorbed.
• Repeat the process for the rest of the dough.
• 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