Oats Payasam

Oats PayasamHappy 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 PayasamOats PayasamOats, 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.

Oats PayasamOats PayasamThis 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

Oats Payasam
Recipe type: Dessert
Cuisine: Indian
Cook time: 
Total time: 
Serves: 4
 
Ingredients
  • 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
Instructions
  1. Heat 1 and ½ cups water in a pan and add oats. (1:3 ratio – for 1 cup of oats 3 cups water)
  2. Cook in a medium flame until the water dries out completely for 10 minutes and transfer to a bowl.
  3. Meanwhile boil milk in another vessel.
  4. 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.
  5. Now add in the cooked oats and mix well. Simmer it for another couple of minutes.
  6. Meanwhile, add jaggery with very little water (1 tbsp) in the same pan used to cook oats.
  7. Add cardamom powder to oats.
  8. Cook jaggery until it dissolves completely and forms a syrup.
  9. 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.
  10. 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! 🙂

Oats Payasam

SWEET PANIYARAM

 sweey paniyaramPaniyaram is a traditional South Indian dish that can be had for breakfast or as an evening snack. It is one of my HB’s favorite dishes. After so many years (since my childhood), I had paniyaram at a restaurant in my home town, Madurai, on our way back here (boarded flight there) from a visit two years before. I loved the softness and the sweetness in the dish and got addicted. 🙂
inippu paniyaramDuring our trip last year, I was looking forward to visiting that restaurant just to have paniyaram! But it was not on the menu the day we went there! Now it happens to be that paniyaram is one of my MIL’s signature recipes! I wasn’t unlucky after all.  🙂
sweet paniyaram
Looks like munchkins, right? But these taste way better!
sweet paniyaram
The recipe given below is straight from MIL’s memory vault.

And before going to the recipe I would like to share few tips

  • Always try to use fresh ground batter for making sweet paniyarams (or save some batter before fermenting).
  • If you already have the idli batter at home, just soak and grind the whole wheat and pacharisi (white raw rice) alone to the batter.
  • The batter for sweet paniyaram should be thick and that’s why we are adding whole wheat or wheat flour.
  • Sweet paniyaram takes little longer time to cook than hot paniyaram.

SWEET PANIYARAM
Recipe type: Breakfast
Cuisine: Indian
Prep time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 
Serves: 3
 
Ingredients
  • Idli rice - 1 cup
  • White Raw Rice (Pacharisi) - 1½ cup
  • Whole lentil (mulu ulundu) - ⅓ cup
  • Whole Wheat / wheat flour - 2 to 3 tbsp or judge yourself (to tighten the dough)
  • Fenugreek seeds - 15
  • Dry ginger (Sukku ) - an inch
  • Cardamom - 4
  • Jaggery - to your taste
  • Ghee required to smear around paniyarams.
Instructions
  1. Soak the rice, lentil, whole wheat and fennel seeds for 6 hrs and grind the batter.
  2. Crush sukku (dry ginger) & cardamom and add to the batter. Make jaggery syrup by adding very little water to the jaggery, when done add the jaggery syrup to the batter and mix it well (if you are not using whole wheat, add the wheat flour now and mix it to the batter without any lumps).
  3. Heat the paniyaram pan and add few drops of ghee in each mould. Pour the batter with the help of a small ladle or spoon in each mould till they are ¾th full. Smear few drops of ghee on the sides of each paniyarams.
  4. Turn the paniyaram in each mould upside down with the help of a stick and let the other side also cook for 2-3 minutes. Add few more drops of ghee if needed. Once cooked till a toothpick comes out clean when inserted, remove the paniyarams with a help of the stick and serve hot on a plate and repeat with the rest of the batter.

My HB gets excited whenever I make this dish and hope you too enjoy it with your loved ones!
sweet paniyaram

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