Seem Paal / Junnu Paalu

We call this milk as Junnu paalu at home. Seempaal or Kadambu paal are the other names for this milk which is rich in protein and nutrients. It is prepared using cow’s first milk, i.e, the first few days milk of cow after delivering a calf. It looks thicker than than the milk which we get regularly. It also looks yellowish in colour.

Here in my native, we buy fresh cow’s milk and the milkman brings it daily morning and evening. Few weeks before, he brought seem paal asked me if I could buy it. My mind went back to my childhood memories which made me to say “Yes” and bought 2 litres of it. It is been ages since I tasted this and also getting a seempaal in chennai is like once in a blue moon. so, I made use of the oppurtunity I got. 🙂 The taste of  seempaal is liked by only few but if you like it, you never forget the taste even if you happened to eat it only once.

We usually make seempaal in two ways, one is simply boiling it in a sauce pan and the other one is prepared by steam cooking. I like (also showed here) the seempal prepared using the first method which is very easy and quick. The later one additionally uses regular milk, jaggery and dry ginger powder which is steam cooked to get a flan like texture. This is usually served as dessert in my home.

Basic Information:

Preparation Time: <5 minutes

Cooking Time: 10 minutes

Serves: 4 persons

Ingredients:

Cow’s first milk / Colostrum milk – 1 litre (see notes)

Sugar  / Jaggery – 1/4 cup

Green Cardamom – 3 nos, crushed

Method:

1) Filter and pour the milk to a large sauce pan.

2) Boil it in medium flame.

3) In 3-5 minutes, you can see the foam that forms on top of the milk. At this time, stir well using a ladle.

4) In few seconds, you can see the milk starts coagulating and separates whey from it. It also looks like a curdled milk.

5) Add sugar now. Increase or decrease the sugar as per your taste.

6) Add crushed cardamom. You can also add 1/4 teaspoon of cardamom powder instead of crushed whole cardamom.

7) Continue cooking for few more minutes and turn the flame off.

8) Pour in bowls and serve warm or chill. It can be served with or without whey.

Notes:

1) Cows first milk here, refers to the milk produced after delivering a calf. Usually, this milk is collected for first 3 to 7 days.

2) If you add jaggery the texture of the milk slightly changes.

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