Jalebi for Indian Cooking Challenge - August

Hello Friends,


Nothing says "Celebration" like Jalebi, how many of you dream about eating it. OK, may be none of you. But, I do. When we plan India trip, I dream of this one place where we get really good Doodh Jalebi (meaning Jalebi with milk and cream). They serve it real warm and in those earthen pots. Now, to get that in US is difficult. We do get some decent jalebis, but nothing like homemade, right?


So, when Srivalli  announced Auagust's Indian Cooking Challenge, I was super excited and nervous both. Super excited as I love jalebi and nervous as I had never made them before in my life and I have heard horror stories about them going wrong.


I have to say that it wasn't as bad as I thought. Of course, I didn't get that professional shape and it doesn't look great, but believe me when I say that it tasted delicious and with warm milk, it reminded me of that old place :)


So, without further ado, here is the recipe. I have one more jalebi recipe bookmarked that I have to try, may be later !!!

Jalebi - जलेबी (Deep Fried Indian Dessert Soaked in Simple Sugar Syrup)

Ingredients

For the Jalebi batter

All purpose flour / Maida - 100 gm

Curds / Yoghurt - 1 cup 

Lime juice - 1 tsp 

Cornstarch - 30 gm 

Hot oil - 1 tbsp 

a large pinch of saffron color

pinch of salt
For the Sugar Syrup

Sugar - 1 cup 

Water - ½ cup 

Lime juice - 1 tsp
Oil for deep frying

Preparation

• Mix everything listed under batter till smooth.
• Keep it on the counter overnight for fermentation. Make sure that your jalebi batter is not too thin and can be pressed into spiral shape without disintegrating in water. It should be that of thick cake batter consistency or thinner than cookie dough consistency.
• Next day, heat oil for deep frying.
• While oil is heating, take sugar, lime juice and water in a separate pot and let it come to boil.
• Let it boil till it forms a one-thread consistency syrup (to check one-thread consistency, take a drop of syrup between your thumbs and index finger and slowly pull your fingers apart and it should form a thread).
• At this point, switch off the heat, but keep the syrup warm when dunking fried jalebis in it.
• Prepare jalebi batter for frying by pouring it into  a zip log bag and then making a very small hole at the end of the ziplock to dispense the batter. Take care in making a small hole, as we don't want really thick spirals.
• Once oil is hot (it has to be really hot to make them crispy), slowly dispense batter into the hot oil in spiral motion forming concentric circles of about 2-4 inches in diameter.
• Don't worry, if you don't get a perfect shape as after dunking them in syrup, everything will taste great, lol
• Once they are deep fried, gets a nice golden color (make sure they are not fried too much), dip them directly in the suryp. Keep them in syrup only for about 20-30 seconds and remove them.
• Continue making all jalebis till batter is done. Take care to make only as many jalebis in the hot oil as many the pot can hold as they expand or fluff a bit after frying and if they are crowded, they won't be cooked well. In a regular pot, you can fry upto 5 jalebis of my size at one time.
• From the measurements I gave, I made about 25 jalebis of 2.5 inch diameter.

Serving

Serve it just as it is, but warm is the best way to go. Or serve it the way we like, dipped in milk and topped with malai (cream).

That's all for now. Take care till next post.