Pori Urundai / Puffed Rice Sweet Balls

Pori is one of my childhood snacks. My mom used to say that I would sit silently and nibble it if I was given a bowl of pori. Till today it is been continuing but I have adapted many ways instead of eating the plain pori. Though I have a sweet teeth, I don’t eat sweet pori urundai and now you can guess why I have not posted this recipe in my blog yet.

My mom on the other hand, loves it a lot. She used to buy a pack of 5 whenever she goes for weekly local market. When she visited me last time, I prepared few of her favourite dishes including pori urundai. I added few drops of colour to the jaggery syrup to get the colourful pori urundai like how we get it in shops.

This puffed rice balls are prepared during the karthigai deepam festival in Tamil Nadu to offer the God as Neivedhyam. We don’t have the custom of preparing it during deepam festival but we prepare it as a snack at home.

Basic Information:

Preparation Time: 10 minutes

Cooking Time: 30 minutes

Makes: 10 balls

Ingredients:

Nell Pori / Aval Pori  – 3 cups

Jaggery – 1/3 cup, heaped and powdered

Cardamom powder – 1/4 teaspoon or Whole green cardamom – 3 nos, crushed

Dry ginger powder / Sukku powder – 1/4 teaspoon (optional)

Water – as required

Food Colour – 1/4 teaspoon (Optional)

Method:

1) Take powdered jaggery in a thick bottom pan / Kadai. Add water just to immerse jaggery. Heat it till the jaggery completely dissolves. Strain through fine filter to remove impurities if any.

2) Heat the filtered syrup again till it reaches the hard ball consistency.(If you are using food colour, add it before checking for the consistency) Take a bowl of water nearby and pour a drop of syrup to it and roll it whether it forms the ball or not. If you are able to make a ball, then the syrup is in right consistency to make pori urundai. Keep stirring it continuously. I was busy in looking for the consistency and couldn’t click picture of it. 🙁 I’ll update it when I prepare it next time.

3) At this stage, the syrup looks like it has only foam. Turn off the flame immediately. Add pori and cardamom powder to it and mix quickly.

4) When you are able to bear the heat, grease your hands with oil and quickly make rough balls out of it first. Later you can shape it perfectly. If the syrup is sticking to your hands, then you can add more puffed rice and mix again.

5) Store it in a airtight container.

Notes:

1) Jaggery syrup consistency is very important. If it is not in hard ball consistency, you can not make balls out of it. Sometimes, you can make round, perfect shaped balls, but it becomes looser after sometimes. It is because you added pori just before reaching the correct consistency.

2) Usually we add 1/4th cup of jaggery for a cup of pori. But this can be adjusted per taste and pori quantity can be increased if required while making pori urundai.

3) After making balls, slightly heat the pan in stove for a second to roll out the pori that are sticking to the pan. Even you can slightly warm the pan, if the mixture hardens while making balls.

4) Dry ginger powder, chopped coconut cloves can also be added to the sugar syrup before making balls.

5) For colour pori urundai, add any of your favorite colour to the jaggery syrup before checking for the consistency. I prepared green and red pori urundai for the given measurement individually. So totally I made 30 pori urundai in three colours.

Related Recipes

Broken Wheat Sweet Pongal / Sweet Dalia Pongal / Samba Gothumai Sakkarai Pongal

Vazhakkai Kola Urundai / Raw Banana Kola Urundai Sorghum and Cowpeas Sweet Salad / Cholam and Karamani Inippu Sundal

Vella Seedai / Sweet Seedai