Khurmi : Wheat flour and jaggery sweet dish – Pola Special

Khurmi is the most popular rainy sweet dish made widely in Chhattisgarh in each and every household. Basically, it is a dish prepared on the occasion of pola festival. Pola is a festival celebrated in Chhattisgarh in which the bulls are decorated and worshipped by the farmers. Generally, people apart from farmers worship the small, cute and colorful miniature idol of bulls made up of mud. Thetri, Khurmi and Biriya are the main dishes that are prepared during this festival to serve as a prasad.

The beauty and uniqueness of the culture of Chhattisgarh is that we have very different dishes, vegetables, desserts for each and every season and festival. Isn’t that so cool ? Due to this factor we get the variation, style and more happiness and the change of taste. Today, I am sharing the recipe of Khurmi.

Khurmi is a sweet deep fried dish or you can consider it dessert or a snack made up of wheat flour and jaggery. Jaggery is said to be very good for health and it is less sweet than sugar. Coconut is added to enhance the flavor and for some crunch. The shape of the khurmi is generally oval. One more interesting fact about khurmi is that the design is made using the woven basket. The lines of the basket make a beautiful texture and also looks more presentable.

Ingredients

• 4 cups of wheat flour.
• 500 grams of jaggery balls.
• 1 coconut (chopped).
• 1 tsp of cardamom powder.
• Oil for deep frying.

How to Cook?

• Take jaggery in a bowl and soak it in 2 cups of water for 2-3 hours till the jaggery gets dissolved completely. Here I have used jaggery balls but you can also use jaggery powder as you like. But make sure that the jaggery you are using is sticky. Using the jaggery balls will give much better result than jaggery powder.
• In an another bowl take 4 cups of wheat flour and sieve it for good two times so that there is no lumps present in the wheat flour.
• Add cardamom powder, coconut and the jaggery solution and form a soft dough. Try to add the jaggery solution slowly so that you can keep a control over the softness of dough.

• Knead the dough for good 5 minutes and take small portions of it make it into oval shape like this below.

• Now, take a woven basket or you can use a fork but traditionally woven baskets are used. Press the khurmi on the woven baskets and you will get a beautiful texture on the khurmi.

• Heat sufficient amount of oil in a pan and fry the khurmi on low flame till golden brown.

• If the khurmi gets little cracks, do not worry as it is a good sign that they are soft on the inside and hard and crunchy on the outside.

Make this unique and simple yet so delicious khurmi and enjoy the different taste of it. You can store it for good 10-12 days and that’s why it is very nice to carry while travelling or for hostlers. The only thing you should take care is that store it in an air tight box as they will lose their crunch when gets in contact with air. So, this was my recipe of Khurmi. Do try and let me know below in the comments.