Gulab Jamun Recipe With Khoya | Tips to make Soft Gulab Jamun From Scratch
Gulab Jamun Recipe With Khoya - It is made of a dough consisting mainly of milk solids, deep-fried and glazed in a sugary syrup often flavoured with cardamom and saffron or rose water.
Servings: 12
Calories: 150kcal
Ingredients
- For the dough:
- 1 Cup khoya Click here for recipe
- 3 Tablespoons All purpose flour Maida
- 1/8 teaspoon cooking soda/Sodium bi carbonate
- Sufficient Oil for deep-frying
- For the sugar syrup:
- 1½ cups Sugar
- 1½ cups Water
- ½ teaspoon cardamom powder
- 5 to 8 saffron strands optional
- 3 to 4 drops rose essence optional
Instructions
Preparing the dough:
- In a mixing bowl, crumble the khoya thoroughly. Mash it well with the heel of your palm. Ensure no lumps or grains remain in the khoya.
- To this add maida, cooking soda and mix well.
- Add very little water or just sprinkle water to form soft dough. Do not knead the dough very hard. The dough should be firm but pliable and should not feel dry. If it does feel dry, wet your hands and work the dough again.
- Cover the dough and set aside for 10-15 minutes.
- While the dough is resting, prepare the sugar syrup.
For the sugar syrup:
- For this add sugar and water in a heavy bottomed pan.
- To this add a few saffron strands and heat the sugar solution over medium heat till the sugar is completely dissolved. Ensure that it does not reach the one string consistency. Turn off the heat and add cardamom powder and mix well.
Making jamuns and deep-frying them:
- After the dough has rested for 15 minutes, roll out gently to make smooth balls out of the dough. Shape the dough into marble-sized balls that are smooth and creaseless. The shape can be round or oblong.
- Heat oil in a deep pan on medium heat. Heat oil till a piece of dough tossed in comes up at once. When it is medium hot, lower the heat and gently slide the balls into the oil.
- Add 5 to 6 jamuns at a time so that they are evenly cooked.
- Roll the jamuns with a ladle for even cooking and browning.
- Keeping the heat low, fry these till a golden brown all over.
- Drain the jamuns out of the oil, and fry the next lot.
- Remove the fried jamuns into an absorbent tissue paper to remove the excess oil. Place the hot jamuns into the warm sugar syrup.
- Finally add rose essence. Cover and let it rest for an hour. This helps the jamuns to absorb the sugar syrup well. They also increase in size.
- Serve gulab jamuns hot or warm or garnished with nuts of your choice. You can refrigerate and store for about a week.
Recipe Video
Notes
- Do not knead the dough too much. Just gently mix and form the balls. If the mixture is dry, sprinkle few drops of water to make the dough soft and then form balls.
- Roll the balls smoothly making sure there are no cracks.
- If you fry jamuns on high heat, then they will turn brown immediately from outside but remain uncooked inside. So cook them on low to medium flame.
- If oil is not hot enough, the jamuns will get cracked and suck more oil.
- Keep turning the jamuns gently while frying to ensure even browning.
- If you want richer taste then use ghee otherwise use oil. You can also use combination of both ghee and oil. Or you can add 2 to 3 teaspoons of ghee in oil for little flavour.
- Do not roll large size balls from dough. Its size will increase when fried and soaked in the sugar syrup.
- The Jamun may look too dark when you take out from oil but it gets the gorgeous red colour once it is soaked in sugar syrup.
- Do not add them directly into very hot sugar syrup and make sure the syrup is warm (not hot) otherwise they will shrink in size. If the syrup has cooled down, warm the syrup before adding the jamuns.
- Use either saffron or rose water.
- If you like the taste, you can add small amount of rose water to get a rose flavour in the syrup (instead of using saffron). Alternatively you can also add a few dried rose petals in syrup after it is prepared. This is totally optional and personal preference.