Thiruvathirai Kali recipe
Thiruvathirai kali and thiruvathirai adai recipe two in one post with step by step pictures, quick videos.
Servings: 3
Ingredients
- ½ cup Raw rice
- 2 tablespoon paasi paruppu moong dal
- ½ cup Jaggery
- ¼ cup Coconut
- 1 pinch Cardamom
- 1 teaspoon Ghee
- 1 cup water
- salt - A pinch
Instructions
Roasting
- Heat a pan and dry roast rice and dal well until it turns golden in color.
- You can roast separately or even together. Do not do in low flame, do it in high flame or medium flame to ensure nice browning which gives distinct flavor to the kali.
- Cool down completely.
Grinding
- Grind in small batches to coarse powder, I like to keep it as noi (grits) rather than coarse flour. It's your choice, both way it works well only texture differs.
- If ground in single batch, chances are there for un even powdering, so do it in batches and use pulse option in the mixie.
Jaggery syrup
- Take jaggery in a vessel and add water just to immerse it.
- Heat until jaggery dissolves.
- Filter it to remove any impurities. Use as below.
Pot in pot method
- Take ground rice + dal in a vessel. Add salt, 1 cup water (1: 2 water ratio).
- Pressure cook for 3 whistles.
- Since I do with less water ratio, I do in pot in pot method to avoid burnt bottom.
- I did pot in pot method. That is keep a vessel inside pressure cooked to cook.
- Once pressure is released naturally, add jaggery syrup, cardamom, coconut to it.
- Cook in a pan until the syrup is absorbed and becomes fluffy (4 mins appoximately in medium flame)
- Add ghee towards end.
One pot method
- You can also do directly but take care not to burn. Depending on pressure cooker, it may take 1 whistle to 3 whistle. Refer notes for tips.
- For this method, take pond rice + dal, water (water ratio is 1:3), salt, Jaggery (or syrup)
- Once pressure is released naturally, open the cooked. There may be some jaggery syrup in the top.
- Switch on the stove again, add coconut, cardamom powder and cook furthermore.
- Add ghee gradually and cook until syrup is absorbed.
Cashew garnish
- Depending on your preference, heat some ghee and roast cashews until golden.
- Add to the kali and serve.
Video
Notes
- I powder the rice to little bigger particles, so cook it first and then add jaggery. Adding jaggery along rice will make rice cooking difficult. So I feel the rice in kali not cooked properly. That's why I adapt cooking rice rice and then adding jaggery. If you feel it's not traditional, you can choose to cook rice powder in jaggery syrup.
- Few of you doubt if this is same tasting as pongal but no, it is not. Since we roast the rice until flavourful, it is totally different in flavor as well as texture.
- Roast the rice really well until reddish, then only it will turn flavorful. If not, it may also turn gooey instead of fluffy result.
- Some rice take more water to get cooked. Also roasting makes it absorb more water. So increase water as needed while cooking in direct pressure cooker method.
- To avoid burnt bottom in direct cooker method, notice the whistle duration. Some will come fast (smaller cooker) and some may take longer. So keep an eye after one whistle, if it takes too long, you can switch off the stove accordingly.
- Making the flour too fine will easily lead to burnt bottom, so cook carefully.