Paal Kozhukattai

Paal kozhukattai is a South Indian sweet in which small rice dumplings are cooked in sweet milk. Some versions use cow’s milk, and others use coconut milk. The soft dumplings are spooned up together with the fragrant, sweet liquid.

Simmering Small Rice Dumplings

In Viji Sridhar’s home recipe, soaked rice is ground with grated coconut and cardamom into a dough that holds together. The dough is rolled into small dumplings, which are added in several batches to thin coconut milk in which jaggery has been dissolved, and cooked until they float. Because the dumplings break apart easily if stirred vigorously at the start, they are left untouched for a while as they cook. Finally, thick coconut milk is added to finish the dish.

In another household, the batter made by grinding soaked rice is heated in a pan while being stirred, then kneaded while still warm and rolled into balls. The dumplings are cooked in thin coconut milk, melted jaggery is added once they are cooked through, and the thick milk is added at the end. The methods differ not only in whether the dough is cooked first or the dough of ground raw rice is rolled as it is, but also in the order in which the sweetener is added. The dumplings are kept small partly so that they cook through easily in the liquid. There are also recipes in which rice-flour dumplings are steamed first and then simmered in coconut milk and cow’s milk.

Jyothi Rajesh, who presents Chettinad cooking, writes that after making filled kozhukattai, the leftover rice dough is sometimes rolled into small balls and simmered in milk and coconut milk. Bengal’s dudh puli is an example of filled, half-moon-shaped dumplings simmered in milk. In the paal kozhukattai of Sridhar’s home, the dumplings are not filled; instead, coconut is ground together with the rice and incorporated into the dough.

Waiting for Grandmother’s Sweet

In Sridhar’s home, Sridhar’s father pressed sugarcane and boiled down the juice to make jaggery. According to Sridhar, the hardened sugar was stacked and stored in large brass containers lined with paper, and containers filled with water, as well as turmeric, were used to keep ants away. Even so, the children, drawn by the sweet aroma, would sneak into the storeroom to snatch bits of the sugar. Sridhar recalls eagerly waiting, with cousins and siblings, for the days when their grandmother made paal kozhukattai with that jaggery.

This sweet is also made as an offering for the Ganesha festival. Some households use cow’s milk or sugar, or flavor it with saffron, so the combination of dumplings and sweet milk is not limited to one set of ingredients.

Glossary