Sweet Pongal/Chakarai Pongal

Happy Makara Sankranthi to all my friends are viewers.


This is a sweet dish prepared on Makara Sankranthi or Pongal festival. I thought this is the right time to share this wonderful, simple and sweet dish with you all. The dish tastes better, if we add more ghee to it. But for a healthier version, add less ghee....definitely, it tastes good.

I made this sweet pongal by cooking rice and dal in a microwave. You can use a pressure cooker for cooking it. The procedure is same. I added milk while cooking. If you don't want to add milk, you can take the same quantity of water ie. 4 1/2 cup water in total.

Try out this sweet and all will love it.



Ingredients

1 cup Raw rice
1/2 cup split Moong dal
2 cup Jaggery
2 cup Milk
Ghee as required
1 tsp Cardamom powder
10 - 15 Cashew nuts
3 cup Water


Method

• Wash and strain raw rice and split moong dal.
• Put the raw rice and split moong dal in a microwave safe bowl along with 2 and 1/2 cup water and 2 cup milk.
• Put 1 and 1/2 tsp ghee. Mix well and keep this in microwave mode - power high for about 20 to 30 minutes. Check in between whether the rice is cooked or not.
• While the rice and dal is cooking, we can make the jaggery syrup.
• For this, heat a deep non stick pan or kadai or pressure pan. Put jaggery and 1/2 cup water in it.
• Keep stirring well and when the jaggery is melted, take it off from heat, strain it to remove any dirt in it.
• Heat it again and melt it to one string consistency.
• In the mean time, fry cashew nuts in ghee till light golden brown colour. Keep this aside.
• When the rice and dal mixture is cooked, mash is nicely.
• Add this to the melted jaggery and mix well. When everything is combined properly, add about 3 - 4 tbsp ghee in it. (if more ghee is added, the pongal will taste more better)
• Take off from heat and add cardamom powder and fried cashew nuts. Mix well.
• Serve it hot by pouring little ghee on top.

Thanks for visiting

Happy Cooking!!