Karthigai Deepam is a Festival of Lights celebrated all over Tamil Nadu during the Tamil month of Karthigai ( mid november- mid december).

I really look forward to this beautiful festival. In our community ( Tamil Brahmins), this festival is dedicated to the brothers. The sisters pray for the well being of their brothers and light the lamp. The whole house looks beautiful with lamps lit up everywhere.

It’s a tradition to make pori urundai as neivedhyam( prasad) for this festival. Pori means puffed rice in Tamil and Urundai means round ( ball). Two types of pori is used, nel pori ( nel means paddy) and aval ( means rice flakes) pori.

Today, I am sharing a very simple recipe to make Nel Pori Urundai 🙂

Ingredients

Nel pori – 4 cups
Jaggery – 1 cup
Dry ginger powder – 1 tsp
Cardamom powder – 1/2 tsp
Finely chopped coconut – 2-tbsps
Ghee – 1 tbsp ( for greasing )

Method

Remove the husk from the pori and add it a big mixing bowl and keep it aside.

Add the jaggery and 1/4th cup of water in a pan. Let it boil till the jaggery melts completely. Strain the syrup to remove all the dirt.

Add the syrup to the pan again and boil the syrup till it reaches the ball consistency.
To check the consistency, drop a very small amount of the syrup into a bowl of water. If you are able to roll the syrup into a ball, then the consistency is perfect.

Take the syrup off the flame. Add the chopped coconut, dry ginger and cardamom powder and mix well.

Now add the syrup to the nel pori and mix well. Let it cool for few mins.

Grease your palms with ghee, take some portion of the pori, press and roll to make a ball ( Urundai).

Similarly make with remaining portion of the pori 🙂