Thursday, May 27, 2010

Gulab Jamuns - How to make perfect ones.


Sift the floor in a sieve (Most important). While you are sifting, 3 cups water in a covered vessel.

Measure 2 cups of floor and half cup water. (tip, do it in two batches of 1 cup each, for fresher dough)
Knead well, dampen surface with a little water, and cover. Leave aside for 15 mins.

When water reaches boil, add 4.5 cups of sugar (3:2 sugar:water), Mix well.
 Leave the mixture on the stove on warm, for the rest of the process.
Grind seeds from 6 cardomoms to fine powder, with a little sugar. Mix this into the syrup

Pour adequate oil in vessel, and keep on stove on low.

Keep oil in an open container near you. 
Apply a generous coat of oil on both palms
Take marble sized bits of dough, and roll well between your palms to form smooth balls with no cracks.( making the balls correctly is crucial for the jamuns not to crack).
Line them on a plate
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Once you have enough to cover 1/2 to 3/4 of the cooking surface in the vessel, stop
Test the heat of the oil by dropping just one dough ball. 
Wait till it fries completely, and turns evenly brown on the outside. Move the ball around with your frying spoon, for even coverage.
You can try once more with another dough ball, so that you can adjust the heat to optimum.

Once fried, take the jamuns out, place them on a tissue for a minute, and drop them into the warm syrup (placing on tissue is not essential, but helps get rid of excess oil.

Drop the rest of the batch into the oil, careful not to let it splatter, and keep moving them around with the spoon (or the top will remain raw) till they brown evenly.

Drain oil, drop in syrup.

Switch off stove, make the next batch with 1 cup jamun floor, 1/4 cup water, and continue (this makes sure batter does not dry off while waiting for the first batch to fry).

Tip: can use milk instead of water.

The picture is of one of my initial batches of Jamun. They all split open evenly, that they looked like pacmans :-)

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