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Karthigai Deepam 2019 – Tuesday, 10 December

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Sakkarai pongal recipe (Sweet pongal recipe)

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sakkarai-pongal-recipe
Sakkarai pongal recipe, a temple style flavourful sweet pongal with jaggery, edible camphor, cardamom, cloves and the essential ghee and cashew nuts.

Rice and dal cooked with the ingredients like edible camphor, elachi, nutmeg and elachi make it smell and taste DIVINELY.

This is my  mom’s staple recipe. I made this few times now and got appreciation too from everyone when I made it for our home Grahapravesham at  our home in Kumbakonam. So from then I wanted to post it here in my blog. I already have a sakkarai pongal recipe in my ulundu vadai post. But its plain and simple without all those special spices.
சக்கரைப் பொங்கல்
I have made this in pressure cooker, but can be made in the traditional way by boiling rice and dal and adding jaggery to it too (like I have updated in the video). Before marriage, me, my mom and our neighbour used to do this pongal in pot in a temple (Kottai mariyamman koil) in Salem.

Every month we used to carry the ingredients and make pongal back of the temple, offer it to god and after that we distribute all the pongal there itself in the temple. We just take a ladle full for ourselves. Other than that we distribute everything there. The vengala pot gets empty in no time. We come back home with heart full of satisfaction.

Click here for cup measurement

sweet pongal
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Sakkarai pongal recipe

Sakkarai pongal recipe, a temple style flavourful sweet pongal with jaggery, edible camphor, cardamom, cloves and the essential ghee and cashew nuts.
Course Main Course
Cuisine Indian
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 40 minutes
Servings 4
Cup measurements

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup Raw rice
  • 2 tbsp Moong dal/ pasi paruppu
  • 3/4  cup Jaggery
  • 2 & 1/2 cups Water
  • 3 tbsp Ghee
  • 1 pinch Salt
  • 6 Cashews
  • 2 tbsp Raisin
  • 1 Elachi
  • 1 Cloves
  • 1 pinch Nutmeg powder
  • 1 fenugreek sized Edible camphor*

Instructions

  • Take pressure cooker/ pan, add 1/4 tsp ghee and roast the moong dal.
  • Add water, washed rice and salt. Pressure cook for 4 whistles. Mash it once done.
  • Powder jaggery and heat it with water just to immerse it and bring to boil. Let the jaggery completely dissolve and  filter it and add to the  mashed rice in the cooker.
  • In a separate pan, heat a tsp of ghee and roast cashews to golden and add raisins to it.
  • Once it fluffs up, transfer it and keep aside.
  • In the same pan, add cloves, elachi and switch off the stove.
  • Add nutmeg powder, give a quick stir.
  • Take out elachi and powder it, add the powdered elachi, edible camphor, cloves along with nutmeg powder to the pongal.
  • Mix well and cook in medium flame for 5 minutes.
  • Add 1/4 cup water or milk if it gets dry while cooking.
  • Add ghee little by little while cooking.
  • Lastly add the fried cashews and raisins.

Video

Notes

  • I used old rice, so needed water at the ratio of 1 : 5. If your rice is new and gets cooked easily, 1 : 4 is enough for this pressure cooker method.
  • After opening the cooker, if the rice is too dry, add 1/4 cup water or milk while mashing. After cooling down, gets thick, so switch off the flame accordingly.
  • I grate nutmeg and roast it in ghee while I roast cloves/elachi / cashews. When you do so, you should make sure to add the grated nutmeg after you switch off the stove. Otherwise, it may get burnt. Use good quality ghee. I always use homemade ghee.
  • The colour of pongal differs with the colour of jaggery.‘Paagu vellam’ works best. It is slightly darker in shade. (Urundai vellam)

Sakkarai pongal for pot method
Ingredients

  • Raw rice – 1 cup
  • Moong dal – 2 to 4 tbsp
  • Jaggery – 1 & 1/4  cup
  • Ghee – 1/4 cup (can adjust as per preference)
  • Cardamom – 1
  • Water for cooking rice – 6 cups
  • Milk – 2 tbsp
  • Water for jaggery syrup – 1/2 cup
  • Edible camphor – mustard seed size
  • Clove – 1
  • Nutmeg powder- a pinch
  • Salt – a pinch (optional)
  • Cashews, raisins – 1 tbsp each

How to make sakkarai pongal:

    1. Take pressure cooker/ pan, add 1/4 tsp ghee and roast the moong dal.1-sakkarai-pongal
    2. Add water, washed rice and salt. Pressure cook for 4 whistles. Mash it once done.2-sweet-pongal
    3. Powder jaggery and heat it with water just to immerse it and bring to boil. Let the jaggery completely dissolve and  filter it and add to the  mashed rice in the cooker.3-sakkarai
    4. In a separate pan, heat a tsp of ghee and roast cashews to golden and add raisins to it. Once it fluffs up, transfer it and keep aside. In the same pan, add cloves, elachi and switch off the stove. Add nutmeg powder, give a quick stir. Take out elachi and powder it, add the powdered elachi, edible camphor, cloves along with nutmeg powder to the pongal.4-sakkarai
    5. Mix well and cook in medium flame for 5 minutes. Add 1/4 cup water or milk if it gets dry while cooking. Add ghee little by little while cooking. Lastly add the fried cashews and raisins.5-sakkarai

Divine smelling + tasting pongal is what you have now! The whole house smell divinely😊
sweet-pongal-recipe

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  20. Kavitha Bhargav

    Ghee dripping pongal… wow. Hey wait are we through with diwali. Just had a doubt since i received pongal recipe 🙂 and then I understood that we can have pongal for diwali but we cannot have diwali for pongal (for those who can understand). he… hee…

    Reply

  37. Nandita Pai Shirali

    Hello Raks… u may have got tonnes of awards for this lovely blog of urs 🙂 I recently got one for my blog and I wished to share it with u, as I have picked up some lovely recipes from ur space here… so my way of saying thanks 🙂 Do chk my blog 🙂

    Reply

  38. Anonymous

    Nice photos and detailed recipe.I tried this today and enjoying the house filled with its aroma. I normally use milk and it gets very messy. Oh…I love this! My Sakkari Pongal was never this good!

    Reply

  46. supriya p

    Made this for Hindu new year right now …awesome recipe keep up the good work..Im srilankan but really love southindian recipes and try them out often 🙂

    Reply

  49. Subhashini Subburaj

    Hi Raks, I made this today(Aadi Friday). It came out so good and it is divine. Everyone liked it. Tastes exactly like temple pongal. Thanks 🙂
    P.S.: Came to know that today is Aadi Friday from your FB post. Thanx 🙂

    Reply

  51. Sudha Chandrasekar

    Looks delicious Raji..Will try this soon…From ur post i remembered the time when we used to go to temple(same kottai mariamman temple.. my native is salem) and keep this pongal during festival days(adi festival) with mom.

    Reply

  67. esh

    Thank you for this recipe. I have tried it three times and each version was as good as the previous one. Only problem is I didn't use nutmeg and camphor as I couldn't find it anywhere in Tekka. Can I know where you purchased these two items?

    Reply

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