Yummy Rasgullas

The first weekend of Jan had been an interesting one and we had planned a local sightseeing. It was a nice itinerary covering two beautiful temples, sumptuous lunch in a veg restaurant followed by a great leisure time in Wonder park where my kid got to play fun games and rides. A full day outing means stocked up milk packets especially when I forget to tell the grocer not to deliver milk for that day.

The next day morning I had two packets of milk in extra onto my refrigerator. Very first thought came to me was to make Channa out of it. And from there I went onto make these yummy slurpy Rasgullas. Onto the recipe...

Ingredients:

           Serving : 15 to 18 small balls of rasgullas. 

           1 litre of milk
           1 lemon
           2 cups of sugar
           2 cups of water

           Strainer ( Jalni)
           Muslin cloth or white cotton handkerchief ( fresh unused)          

Way to go

Making Channa: 

• Bring milk to boil and when hot, squeeze lemon juice into it after de-seeding the lemon. And now close the pan and keep aside. Ideally in 0.5 hr time the channa should seperate out from milk. If that doesnt happen, add in a spoon of lemon and heat gently in low heat for two minutes and turn off. And leave aside for few more mts. This atleast would work in all cases.
• Once Channa is seperated, strain it out of the liquid, and discard the liquid. 
• Was the channa in water thoroughly. This would remove the sour taste of the lemon. This is very important. Else your rasgullas will not taste good. 
• Now tie the channa in a muslin cloth. Squeeze out the excess water and let it rest overnight. I let the muslin cloth with channa ontop of a narrow mouthed jar, so any remaining moisture is drained out over night. This is a very important step before you use it for making the rasgullas.  Unless you do this step your channa would be mushy and will not roll well into a ball and would be sticky.
• Next day morning, open the muslin cloth, and you will get channa which you can break into crumbles. Now knead this channa well for five minutes and then roll them into a big ball. You will get a dough that binds well and doesnt break. Your channa is ready.
• Roll them into small balls of marble size. You might get around 15 balls.  

Readying Sugar Syrup:

• Take a kadai and add two cups of sugar, and two cups of water. Heat them in medium low flame. Once sugar dissolves, add two spoons of milk and continue heating. In a minute or so, all dirt in Sugar would foam up on top. Remove it with a spoon. This is an important step too that you should not skip unless you want to swallow those dirt.
• There is no need for Syrup to reach any consistency etc. In fact soon after sugar dissolves and you do the above step to remove the dirt, you are done with making the Syrup.

Make the Rasgullas (also check pressure cooker method at the bottom for faster version):

• Once Sugar syrup is done, take aside half of the Syrup in a bowl and let it cool
• The remaining syrup continue heating in medium low flame, and add in the rasgulla balls gently. Balls should be immersed sufficiently the the hot syrup on stove. And now close it with a lid and let it cook for about one minute. Now open the lid, and you will see that balls have enlarged in size. In my case, it didnt double in size but it did enlarge from its original size.
• What is most important during this process is not to let Syrup get caramlized or reach string consistency. For this reason, keep adding one or two spoons of the Syrup which you have earlier kept aside for cooling. This will normalize the overall temperature of the one on stove and prevent caramalization.

• Cooking Rasgullas for about four to five minutes and you are done. Now to check if they are done, pull one out and carefully ( it would be very hot) and gently press the ball. Once pressure is released the balls would relax back to original shape. That means it is cooked enough.
• Now turn off the stove. Add the balls to the syrup that was earlier kept aside, and once the Syrup on stove is cooled enough, now pour it too the rasgullas.
• Now let the whole balls soak in syrup for about 8 hours atleast before you enjoy it with the family.
• Your tasty Rasgullas are ready. 

       Pressure cooker method for making rasgullas:

                      Once the sugar syrup is done pour into a two litre pressure cooker, add the chana balls into the Sugar syrup. Make sure balls are immersed in the sugar syrup or atleast float in them. Its ok if there is not enough space and few of them sink below the upper floating balls. Close the lid and cook for two whistles. Now turn off the stove and allow the pressure to seize. Now open the lid. You can boil the Sugar syrup with balls if the syrup is too thin. Make sure you do not boil beyond one string consistency. Now let it cool to room temperature and refrigerate. Allow it a day to obsorb the sweetness and then enjoy it chill.