Athirasa Recipe | Festive Recipes | Traditional Recipes of Udupi

The month of Diwali is usually a food marathon for all of us in India. Trying newer Diwali recipes every year becomes habitual. If at all you have guests visiting, then everything goes to a new height of excitement.

It is obvious for all of us to go crazy over Diwali sweets and dishes. It is traditional to go visiting relatives and friends to wish ‘Happy and Prosperous Diwali’. Along goes a box of homemade dishes or Diwali sweet box or a gift box of dry fruits.

To treat your family and guests this Diwali, here is another festive special recipe traditionally made in many regions of Karnataka.

Athirasa or Adhirasam is a crispy yet juicy golden brown disc of rice powder mixed in jaggery syrup and deep fried in oil. It is also locally called as Kajjaya in Kannada.

Read further for the recipe.

Ingredients needed

1 cup dosa rice
1 cup jaggery (powdered or chopped into small pieces)
1 tea spoon powdered black pepper
1 tea spoon powdered cardamom
A pinch of salt
2 tea spoon roasted sesame seeds
Oil for deep frying

Athirasa / Adhirasam / Kajjaya Recipe

Soak rice in water for 3-4 hours. Drain water on a strainer and make sure every drop of water drips away.

Spread the wet rice on a clean cotton cloth and leave for half an hour so that cloth soaks up all the extra water.

While the rice is still moist, add it to the dry powdering mixi jar and prepare the rice powder. Pour all the rice powder from jar to a wide bowl.

Add cardamom and black pepper powders along with the rice powder and mix well. Do not forget to add a pinch of salt before mixing.

For now keep the bowl aside.

How to make jaggery syrup with right consistency

In a heavy bottom pan, add powdered jaggery and 3-4 spoons of water and heat. Keep whisking so that the jaggery does not bun and stick to the bottom.

When the jiggery dissolves and melts into liquid form, it is time to be highly alert.

Keep checking for the consistency of the jaggery syrup. There is an exact point of time to stop boiling jaggery, else your entire recipe is ruined.

If you switch off the flame even few seconds earlier, then your athirasa will break and dissolve while frying in the oil. If you delay few seconds in switching off the flame, your athirasa will be too hard to eat.

To find if your jaggery syrup has attained the right consistency, keep a small bowl of water in place.

Add a drop of jaggery syrup in the water bowl and check if the jaggery drop flattens in shape and dissolves in the water. If it dissolves, then continue boiling the jaggery syrup. Keep checking the consistency every few seconds.

When the jaggery remains in the water like a tiny soft ball without dissolving, then your syrup is done. Remember, soft ball!! Switch off the flame and remove the pan from the stove, else the heat of the stove will thicken the syrup more and you will lose the perfect consistency you just attained and the syrup will get hardened.

Phew !! Your 90% of the athirasa recipe is like done successfully.

Preparing the athirasa dough

Now, add the jaggery syrup to the bowl of rice+cardamom+pepper powder little by little and mix well. It will get gooey and sticky. That is how it is; cannot help. Keep adding and mixing until you get the stiffness to make a lemon sized ball.

Now, keep this dough aside to set for at least 4 hours. Some ladies suggest to letting it set for 24 hours, which is the perfect way of making athirasa.

athirasa dough south india traditional recipe

When the setting time is up, the dough is ready for deep frying. You will find it a little stiffer than you had left it.

Heat a wok with oil for deep frying. Keep the flame simmered throughout frying.

Grease your palm and a banana leaf (or plastic cover sheet, whichever is convenient.). Place a lemon sized ball of the dough on the banana leaf and pat it into a disc shape. Let it not be too thin or thick.