Karthigai special Aval Pori Urundai

Karthigai special Aval Pori Urundai

Aval Pori Urundai is one of the tasty and special recipe prepared on Thirukarthigai day. 
Karthigai festival is one of my favourite since my childhood days, as we light lots of traditional mud lamps and decorate the whole house with them. 

Ingredients:

• 8 Cups Aval pori
• 2 Cups Powdered Jaggery 
• 1 ladle Roasted peanuts
• 1 ladle Grated Coconut 
• 1/2 tsp Cardamom powder
• 1/4 tsp Dry Ginger powder/Sukku podi
• A pinch Pachai Kalpuram
• For Greasing Ghee

Method:

1) Add roasted peanuts, grated coconut and cardamom powder to Aval pori and mix well.

2)  You can use store bought unsalted peanuts or prepare at home by dry roasting the raw peanuts and rubbing the skin away.

3) Take the measured Jaggery powder in a kadai and add water just to immerse them. Leave this mixture to boil till jaggery melts.

4) Strain it to remove any impurities. Wash the kadai and add the syrub again and leave it to boil in medium flame. Add dry ginger powder and mix well.

7) Next, add pachai kalpuram  and mix well. Keep ready,  a small bowl of water to check the consistency of jugar syrup.


8) After Jaggery turns to a syrup consistency, drop few syrup in the water. Jaggery should not get dissolved and it should form a soft ball when you try to roll it. This is the correct consistency so switch off the flame now.

9) Add needed amount of jaggery syrup to the Aval pori and start mixing with a ladle.

10) This aval pori and syrup mixture needs to be warm, don't leave it to sit for a long time. Grease your hands and start making the balls immediately. First, make a rough ball then press it firmly to make tight ball so that it will not break.

11) If you are not able to finish all the pori mixture into a ball , you can leave the last few mixture as it is.

Tips:

1)  This paagu stage is thakkali pazha paagu that means you will be able to form soft ball when dropped in water and when you take it out of water you should be able to press this ball. 

If it becomes hard like stone then your paagu has gone to next stage so add few more water and boil it to get correct consistency. 

If your paagu gets dissolved in water and if you add pori in at this step (ie one step ahead of paagu stage)then you will not be able to make balls with this paagu as Jaggery will not stick together to form a firm ball.

2) It is always better to add the syrup on pori instead of adding it directly to kadai with paagu. As the kadai hot will not allow you to make balls properly also if you have some left over paagu you can save it for some pottu kadalai urundai too 😊

3) Sometimes there might be mud sitting at the bottom of the aval pori packet so it is better to check it before adding entire packet to make urundai.

4) If your aval pori is not crispy then dry roast for few minutes to get the crispness.

Variations:

1) You can add copparai/dry coconut instead of fresh coconut. You can even roast it in ghee and add to  aval pori. Some might prefer to chop the coconut into small pieces instead of grating them.

2) Some prefers to dust rice flour instead of ghee while making urundais.