Sakkarai pongal recipe (Sweet pongal recipe)

     This is my favourite sweet pongal recipe. 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 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.
 
      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. 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.

Sakkarai pongal (sweet pongal) recipe

Recipe Cuisine: Indian  |  Recipe Category: Sweet
Prep Time: 5 mins    |  Cook time: 40 mins    |  Serves: 4

Ingredients

Raw rice - 1/2 cup

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Moong dal/ pasi paruppu - 2-3 tblsp

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Jaggery - 1/2 cup heaped

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Water - 2 & 1/2 cups

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Ghee - 3 tblsp

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Salt - pinch

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Cashews - 5-6

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Raisin - 1-2 tblsp

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Elachi - 1

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Cloves - 1

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Nutmeg powder - 1 pinch

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Edible camphor * - A tiny pinch

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* Use edible camphor very little, if you add more, it may spoil the whole taste with over flavour. Use a fenugreek seed size alone.

Method

1. In a pressure cooker/ pan, add 1/4 tsp ghee and roast the moong dal.
2. Add water, washed rice and salt. Pressure cook for 4 whistles. Mash it once done.
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.
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.
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.

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)

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

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