Adhirasam

Adhirasam is a South Indian sweet made from a dough of rice flour and jaggery that is flattened and deep-fried. The surface turns golden brown in the oil, while the inside keeps a soft chew.

In Tamil Nadu it is enjoyed in homes and temples during festivals such as Diwali, and the flavor of rice combines with the sweetness of boiled-down jaggery.

Combining Rice Flour and Jaggery

Soaked rice is drained, dried in the shade, and then finely ground. Jaggery is melted in water and strained, and the rice flour is gradually mixed into the syrup as it is heated further. To check how far the syrup has cooked down, a drop is placed in cold water. One indication is when the drop does not dissolve in the water, can be gathered with the fingers, and forms a soft ball.

Cook Jeyashri Suresh explains that if the syrup is too thin, the dough falls apart in the frying oil, and if it is cooked down too far, the dough becomes hard. In Jeyashri’s method, the rice is not dried completely but is ground into flour while it is still slightly damp. Ways of drying the rice also differ: in another Chettinad recipe, the drained rice is spread on a cloth before being ground.

The dough of syrup and flour is sometimes prepared the day before and left to rest. Small portions are taken and spread into rounds on oiled leaves or similar surfaces, then fried. In some methods, the fried pieces are pressed with a flat utensil while still warm to squeeze out excess oil. Tamil Nadu Agricultural University also has an example in which millet flour is combined with the rice and the dough is left overnight.

Resting Dough and Household Flavors

In some rested doughs of rice flour and jaggery, microorganisms are at work. Bacteria of the genus Bacillus have been found in dough from Madurai district, but how the dough changes differs depending on the proportions and how it is left to stand. Some recipes mix in the syrup, let the dough cool, and then shape and fry it without a long rest.

Food writer Ashwin Rajagopalan recalls that as a child, adhirasam was the one he looked forward to among the sweets his mother made from scratch for Diwali. In cook Jeyashri’s home, on the other hand, there was no custom of always making it for Diwali. Unhappy with how her first attempt turned out, she tried the proportions and method her mother had learned from a cook, and she says she achieved a soft sweet. Even for the same sweet, which festival it is made for and from whom the method is learned differ from household to household.

Similar sweets made with rice and jaggery exist in many places and go by different names in different regions, such as ariselu and kajjaya. Sri Lanka also has a similar sweet called athirasa, made by kneading rice flour and jaggery and frying it in flat rounds. A writer who ate plump ones in Madurai also noted how they differed from the flat ones seen at a shop in Chennai. Even among these round fried sweets, the flour proportions, the handling of the dough and the finished result vary.

Fried sweets on a plate. The photographer lists names such as ariselu and adhirasam together. 2014, Jagisnowjughead / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Resized version supplied by the source; content not changed after retrieval.

Glossary