Tirunelveli halwa
Tirunelveli iruttu kadai halwa is very famous around the region. It is too sweet and full of ghee. That makes it a perfect dessert.
Ingredients
- 1 cup Whole Wheat
- 1 cup Ghee
- 3 cup Sugar white or brown sugar, adjust sugar as per your taste
- 1 litre water
- 15 Cashews broken to half pieces
Instructions
Soaking
- Soak the wheat for about 8 hours in water. After 8 hours, Wheat doubles in quantity.
Extract wheat milk
- Drain the excess water. Grind the wheat in mixer grinder by adding some water. Wheat milk comes out. Filter the wheat milk using a strainer or muslin cloth.
Resting the milk
- Leave the wheat milk undisturbed for about 3 hours. The water comes up. As we are soaking for 8 hrs, the wheat will have little fermentation smell. So, drain the clear water from it.
Cooking halwa
- Add 3 cups of fresh water. For 1 cup wheat, wheat milk and water togather should come to 1 ltr.
- In a small pan, add 1 tbsp of ghee and melt, then add cashew pieces and fry cashews until it turns to golden brown colour and keep aside.
- If you are using brown sugar, no need to caramelize the sugar for bringing the amber colour to halwa. You can add all sugar along with it and mix.
- If you use white sugar, caramelize the sugar. In the same small pan, add 1/4 cup sugar with 1/4 cup water and bring to boil. Keep stirring until it changes to brown colour. Turn off the heat and keep aside.
- Heat the kadai and start adding wheat milk mix little by little. 1/2 cup each time would be correct. Keep the stove in medium low flame and keep stirring. It starts thickening within a minute.
- Add the another 1/2 cup wheat milk and keep stiring. Repeat this process until you complete 2 cups of wheat milk. Then add 1 tbsp ghee and mix.
- Repeat the process of adding wheat milk and stirring until you finish all the wheat milk. In between add 1 tbsp of ghee.
- Once you added all the wheat milk mix, it starts thickening. From now onwards, keep the stove in low flame only. Now add 1 tbsp of ghee each time and mix well until it gets absorbed.
- It takes about 1 hour time to complete cooking. Until then keep adding 1 tbsp ghee every 5 minutes once and keep stirring.
- Once it is cooked well, the ghee starts seperating and oozes out in the sides. Now add the fried cashews along with ghee used to fry. Mix well for 2 minutes and turn off the heat. Tirunelveli Halwa is ready.
Video
Notes
Tip 1- Use a big kadai to make halwa, so that there will be enough space for stirring.
Tip 2- Instead of caramelizing the sugar, you can add "naattu sarkarai" (unrefined sugar) about 1/2 cup to get the nice brown colour halwa.
Tip 3- You can always adjust the sugar level by checking the taste. If you like to reduce the sugar, add 2 cup while mixing the with wheat milk. Remaining, you can add little by little when the milk starts thickening. At this stage, you should finish sugar adjustments. Only after this, we keep adding ghee and stir continuously.
Tip 4- If you prefer to make halwa in any particular shape, transfer the halwa to the mould when its hot. After it is cooled down, take out of mould and serve.
Tip 5- If you feel your halwa is sticky while eating, it means it is not cooked fully. You should cook little more until ghee oozes out.
If you overcook, it will become hard. To get it perfect, turn off the heat once ghee starts oozing out.
Tip 6- If you add the whole wheat milk at once, it will be difficult to stir as it starts thickening immediately at the bottom. This is the reason for adding wheat milk little by little, so all of it gets cooked evenly.