Gulab Jamun is a popular Indian dessert/sweet recipe. It is a deep-fried ball made of solidified milk and flour is then soaked in the simple sugar syrup. In India, gulab jamun is made on every single celebration from birthday to the wedding buffet. Being not a sweet tooth person, even my husband loves gulab jamun. Fun fact, when he was the kid, he used to say gulpa jam instead of gulab jamun. So funny isn’t.
We could also make the Jamun with the milk powder, potato, sweet potato, ready-made mix, and bread.People buy the readymade gulab jamun mix assuming, it is difficult to make the soft Jamun with khoya/mawa.But it is not true if we carefully follow the few steps, then it is easy to make soft Jamun with khoya/mawa.
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Ingredients:
- 100 grams of mawa/khoya/reduced solid milk
- 2 tbsp of all-purpose flour/maida
- 1 tsp of ghee
- 1/8 tsp of baking soda
- 1 tbsp of milk
Note :
I used homemade fresh MAWA/KHOYA. If you’re using store-bought Mawa, then you may need 1 tbsp per 100 grams of Mawa. Because the store-bought is frozen for a long time, it would be a little dry. It is safe to start with 1 tbsp per 100 grams khoya and increase if needed. However, you may not need more than 2 tbsp spoon. The dough should be stretchy like chapati/puri dough. It should be soft and easy to split.
Sugar Syrup:
- 2 cups of white sugar
- 2 cups of water
- 1/4 tsp of green cardamom powder
Mawa or khoya:
Mawa/khoya is a sugar-free reduced milk. In Tamil we call it palkova. It is available in Indian stores or, you can make it at home. Simply simmer the full fat cow’s milk until it is solidified. Bring the milk to boil over medium heat and then reduce the heat to medium-low. To avoid scorching at the bottom, continuously stir the milk. Two liters milk yields about 300 grams of mawa/khoya. With 100 grams of khoya, we can make 12 to 15 small gulab jamun. Though it is quite a time consuming and highly labor work, I prefer to make Khoya at home
Procedure :
Step 1: Sugar Syrup:
- In a deep dish, add sugar and water. Heat the sugar and water over medium heat. Keep stirring until the sugar is completely dissolved.
- Once the sugar is dissolved, let the sugar water boil for 10 minutes or so on medium heat.
- When the solution is little thick and sticky, add the green cardamom powder and turn off the stove.
- Cover the sugar syrup with a lid so that syrup will be warm when we add the fried jamun.
- When you add the fried jamuns to the sugar syrup, the sugar syrup should be warm.
Step 2: Gulab Jamun dough
- Take the mawa in a large plate, add in the ghee, and baking soda. Knead the mawa until it becomes soft like butter. Strech the mawa with palm and bring it back altogether. Repeat this until mawa is soft.
- Make sure the mawa has become soft and add in the maida/flour. Gently combine the mawa and flour to make a soft dough. Once the flour is added, don’t knead because it will make the gulab jamun hard.
- If the dough is crumbly, add the milk little by little and combine everything together.
- Make small lemon size balls of the dough. Roll the balls in between the palm to make the surface smooth. Do not give pressure, gently roll them.
Step 3: Fry the Gulab Jamuns
- In a deep dish, heat required oil for deep frying, the oil should not be hot.
- Once the oil is heated, drop the jamuns into the oil and fry them over medium-low heat until deep brown color.
- Constantly flip the Jamun only then it will be fried evenly.
- Take out the deep brown Jamun out of the oil and immediately drop into the warm sugar syrup. If you want to drain the excess oil, place the fried Jamun on a paper towel only for 3 seconds or so.
- While adding the sugar syrup, if the syrup is not warm, reheat for a few seconds. But make sure syrup is not heated to the string consistency.
- With a ladle, push the jamuns into the sugar syrup for a couple of times. Let the Jamun soak in the syrup for 5 to 8 hours.
- Serve the jamuns once it has soaked most of the syrup about 5 hours or so.
