Rosogolla / Rasgullas

Rosogollas (রসগোল্লা) or Rasgullas are the quintessential Bengali sweet and loved by almost everyone who loves sweets. Any occasion is a good occasion to indulge in Rosogollas. If you visit the home of a Bengali family, you may be served sweets for breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner.

They are basically balls of cottage cheese cooked in sugar syrup. Not very difficult to make although it may seem so before you try it out. With a pressure cooker at your disposal, it becomes even easier.

Our first results. Each one turned out about 1.5 inches in diameter.

Ingredients:

Milk: 1 litre. You may use high fat milk, although we got good results from 3% fat milk. 

Vinegar: 2 tbsp mixed in ½ cup water or 1 lime

Sugar ¼ kg or as per your taste.

Rose water: few drops (optional)

Ice water: 1 litre

Servings:

Approximately 12-15 Rosogollas. 

Procedure:

Boil the milk. Once the milk comes to boil, reduce the flame and slowly add the vinegar/lime juice till the milk starts curdling. Stir the milk slowly till the milk curdles completely. Switch off the gas and pour the curdled milk (chenna) on a muslin cloth to separate the water from the chenna. Be careful when handling the hot liquid while pouring it out on the muslin cloth.

Now pour ice water over the chenna in the same muslin cloth and wash well to remove the sourness due to the vinegar/lime juice. Drain out all the water and hang the chenna in the cloth at least for 20 min so that all the water is removed. Now your chenna is ready. Knead the chenna gently. Do not knead it hard. Make small balls of chenna. It should be smooth and there shouldn’t be any cracks.

In a pressure cooker take water (sufficient to cover the chenna balls) and mix the sugar in it. Add the chenna balls and pressure cook for 1 whistle in a medium flame. And then 5 min in low flame and switch off the gas.. Open the pressure cooker only after the pressure inside the pressure cooker drops to normal. If you open the pressure cooker before the pressure normalizes, the Rosogollas may shrink. 

Optional: Once cooked, you may add few drops of rose water for added flavour. 

Refrigerate after preparing and consume hot or cold. Do not store Rosogollas for too long as the sugar syrup tends to spoil.

From 1.5 litres of milk, we got 23 Rosogollas

Tweak: Make badam milk and add chopped almonds and pista and soak these Rosogollas in the badam milk. You will have Ras Malai prepared right in your home.

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Making Gulab Jamuns From Readymade Mix

Making great looking Gulab Jamuns is not magic. At least we don't think it is. But our friends and family are mostly awestruck by our Gulab Jamuns. So we decided to share our method of preparing them. What I believe is that making good Gulab Jamuns takes lots of effort. The kneading of the mix with milk into dough takes good amount of shoulder power. Again making the round dough balls takes lots of effort that we have mentioned below. So here goes.

We follow the recipe almost as it is written on the back of packs, with certain deviations. We prefer to use Gits Mix. It has given us the best results.

1. Use lukewarm milk to mix the dough instead of water.

2. Add the milk slowly, about 1 tbsp at a time. If the pack asks you to use 150 ml, measure exactly that much and mix that full amount.

3. Sometimes while mixing you will see the mix will become very sticky but keep on kneading. It'll become dry again. Remember, FINISH mixing the entire measured milk into the dough.

4. The consistency of the dough should be soft. If you don't see oil/ghee on your palm, mixing is not complete. Remember this.

5. Cut the dough into about 1 cm dia. Put in between your palms and press it hard while rotating palms in opposing directions. Reduce the distance between the palms slowly and you will see that the round shape forming slowly. NOTE: If you don't see you palms becoming oily AND warm, you are not putting enough effort 

6. If the dough ball is kinda sticky on your palms, then its having extra water. In that case, compress and roll with extra force to work out some of the water. The moment the palm becomes oily again, reduce the extra force and make a ball to be fried.

7. Either fry it immediately or keep it covered with moist muslin/cotton cloth. The surface of the round dough ball SHOULD NOT dry up before putting in the oil.

8. There must be enough oil that the dough balls do not touch the bottom of the frying vessel.

9. Fry till you get golden brown colour. Remember if you get one shade while frying, it will become lighter than that after soaking because it expands.

10. Making syrup is pretty simple. Follow instructions on the pack. You can increase the water to reduce the sweetness. But cool down the fried balls to room temperature and add to the hot syrup for soaking.

11. Next step is to wait for the GJs to soak up the syrup. At least 2-3 hours it takes to fully soak.

12. Refrigerate immediately and serve chilled or hot, as per your preference. Gulab jamuns with vanilla ice cream s a great combination.

 

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