Rasgulla

Rasgulla is a traditional dessert from West Bengal, India. It involves cooking ball-shaped dumplings of chhena/paneer(unripened curd cheese/cottage cheese) in sugar syrup. I love the rasgullas from Haldirams,a popular indian brand. With navratri and diwali around the corner, I wanted to try making sweets I have never attempted to try earlier. I made a list few days ago and rasgullas topped the list. October is almost here and lets kick-start the month of festivals, joy and happiness with a bowl of soft,spongy and absolutely drool-worthy rasgullas.

Required Ingredients:

For Chhena/Paneer:

• Milk(Full fat/cream)- 1 litre
• Lemon juice-2-3 tbsp
• Water-1 cup
• All purpose flour/maida or sooji/ cream of wheat- 1 tsp

For Sugar Syrup:

• Sugar-2 cups
• Water-4 cups
• Green cardamom-2
• Milk-1 tbsp
• Rose water- 1 tbsp

Method:

For chhena/paneer:

In any vessel/pan, boil milk.

Add lemon juice in parts and stir on low flame.

Allow the milk to curdle completely. If it doesn’t curdle much, add an extra tablespoon of lemon juice and stir.

Once the milk curdles completely, switch off the flame.

Transfer it to a kitchen towel and separate the curdled milk from the whey water.

Add a cup of water to the curdled milk and squeeze the kitchen towel. This brings down the temperature of the chhena and removes lemony flavour from the chhena.

Tie the kitchen towel to your kitchen tap or anywhere else in your kitchen. Leave it for 30-40 minutes or until no traces of water is left

Remove the kitchen towel from the tap and transfer the chhena/paneer to a bowl. Add a tsp of all-purpose flour or fine roasted sooji and mix well.

Knead it nicely for 10-15 minutes and make a smooth dough.

Make small-medium sized balls from the dough and set aside. If you notice tiny cracks in your balls, its fine.

Cover the balls using a wet kitchen towel and set aside.

For sugar syrup:

In a deep-bottomed pan/vessel, add sugar and water. Stir on medium flame until the sugar dissolves completely.

Let it boil for 10-12 minutes on medium flame.

Add a tablespoon of milk and stir. You will see impurities(if any) floating on the top. Filter the impurities from the syrup

Once the sugar syrup turns a little thick, add green cardamoms and stir.

Now add the prepared chhena balls and cover and cook  on low flame for 10-13 minutes.

After 10 minutes, you would see that the balls have doubled in size.

Turn off the flame. Let it cool completely. Once cold, add rose water and stir.

Garnish with saffron strands and serve or refrigerate and serve.

Notes:

• My chhena balls weren’t smooth enough as i didn’t add all-purpose flour or sooji while making the dough. For a gluten-free option you can add a tsp of corn flour.
• To check whether the rasgullas are done, place a rasgulla in a bowl of sugar syrup. If it sinks to the bottom, it is cooked.
• Full cream milk will yield tastier rasgullas. However, you can use normal milk. I used normal milk.