Sakkarai Pongal/Sweet Pongal | Rice and Jaggery Pudding

Traditional South Indian sweet rice prepared during the harvest festival called Pongal / Sankranthi. In villages freshly harvested rice is cooked with jaggery and dal in clay earthenware pots and offered to God along with vegetables, lentils, sugarcane and fruits. This is also prepared as neivedyam or prasadam during other auspicious occasions and festivals.

Very simple to make but spectacular in taste, the ordinary rice becomes mouthwateringly extraordinary in sweet pongal. Here’s sakkarai pongal recipe made in pressure cooker-

Would you like to try more Indian sweet? Then try this

Paal Payasam

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Sakkarai Pongal

Jyothi Rajesh

Traditional South Indian sweet rice prepared during the harvest festival called Pongal / Sankranthi. In villages freshly harvested rice is cooked with jaggery and dal in clay earthenware pots and offered to God along with vegetables, lentils, sugarcane and fruits. This is also prepared as neivedyam or prasadam during other auspicious occasions and festivals.

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Prep Time 5 mins

Cook Time 45 mins

Total Time 50 mins

Course sweet

Cuisine Indian

Servings 4 servings

Calories

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

• ▢ 1 cup rice
• ▢ ½ cup yellow moong dal
• ▢ 1 cup jaggery, broken or grated
• ▢ 4 tbsp ghee
• ▢ ¼ tsp cardamom powder
• ▢ 10-15 cashews
• ▢ 10 raisins

Instructions

 

• Soak rice and dal separately for minimum 20 mins. Then pressure cook them with about 3.5 cups water separately.
  
• Mash rice and dal well and mix them together. Keep aside until use.
  
• Grate or chop the jaggery into small pieces, add water and jaggery in a deep bottomed pan and stir until jaggery melts.
  
• Wait for the jaggery to dissolve completely without any lumps. No syrup consistency required. Then filter the jaggery water to remove any impurities. Pour the filtered jaggery back to the pan and bring it to boil.
  
• Once boiling starts, add the mashed rice and dal and Cook everything on medium flame until it thickens and becomes sticky.
  
• In another pan add ghee and roast the cashews and raisins until golden brown.
• Finally add the powdered cardamon, fried cashews, raisins and leftover ghee to rice-dal-jaggery mix and stir well. Switch off flame.
  

Notes

1. 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
2. I have soaked and cooked rice and dal seperately. Soaking helps in cooking rice and dal faster, and the reason I cooked them seperately is that I am used to that method, but you can cook them to gather too, just make sure you soak them.
3. The colour of pongal differs with the colour of jaggery. ‘Paagu vellam’ works best. It is slightly darker in shade.

 

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