Happy Tamil New Year, everyone! Missing home :(. It is a tradition all over the world to make special dishes on special occasions like festivals, celebrations etc and Tamilians are no exception to that. Though it is not a big occasion like Deepavali or Pongal, Tamil New Year is still celebrated widely back home. You get to watch lots of programmes in cable television, you get a Government holiday and get to eat scrumptious food:) Now lets concentrate a little bit more on that last word, after all this is a food blog and I am foodie (hope you are too :)) I make it a habit of preparing something new, usually a sweet dessert on all special occasions and holidays. And I try not to make the same dish for two different occasions. This year, I tried a new type of Payasam or Kheer made from oats called the Oats Payasam and am sharing the recipe for it here.
Oats, as you all might know is a popular breakfast food which is rich in nutrients. Most often, you might have had it in the form of porridge (both sweet and savory). We too got in to this breakfast routine of having oats and ended up with buying different varieties of them like steel cut, rolled etc. For Tamil new year, I decided to make use of the oats, come on, how much can you have it as breakfast only :). I came across this Oats Payasam recipe and decided that it is going to be my special dish this year. Oats Payasam is a very simple dish but extremely tasty. It is made using steel cut oats, jaggery, ghee and nuts like cashews, pistachios and almonds.
This is my first time making the Oats Payasam and I am very happy with the outcome. It is very tasty and I find it similar to Aravana Payasam in taste, especially that crunchiness, served as prasadham in Sabarimala Temple back home. Try this sweet Payasam in honor of an even sweeter language, Tamil, on this special day and enjoy it with your loved ones 🙂
Also check out my Paal Payasam recipe here
- Steel cut oats – ½ cup
- Water – 1 ½ cup
- Milk – 3 cups ( I used 2% milk)
- Jaggery – ½ to ¾th cup
- Cashews – 7 nos
- Pistachios and Almonds, roughly chopped, seperated – 1 tsp
- Cardamom powder, freshly ground – 4 nos
- Heat 1 and ½ cups water in a pan and add oats. (1:3 ratio – for 1 cup of oats 3 cups water)
- Cook in a medium flame until the water dries out completely for 10 minutes and transfer to a bowl.
- Meanwhile boil milk in another vessel.
- Once the milk is boiled, simmer and add ½ tsp roughly crushed almonds, pistachios and few cashews. Simmer it for couple of minutes stirring occasionally.
- Now add in the cooked oats and mix well. Simmer it for another couple of minutes.
- Meanwhile, add jaggery with very little water (1 tbsp) in the same pan used to cook oats.
- Add cardamom powder to oats.
- Cook jaggery until it dissolves completely and forms a syrup.
- Switch of the flame and add jaggery syrup to the oats mixture. Mix well until the jaggery syrup is well incorporated to the oats payasam.
- Fry cashews with ¼ tsp ghee and add them to the oats payasam. Sprinkle the remaining chopped nuts on top and serve hot or cold according to your taste. Enjoy! 🙂
