Thiruvathirai Adai

Recipe to make Thiruvathirai Adai with step by step pictures :

• We can use store bought ready made rice flour also for preparing this recipe. But generally for neivedhyam, it is our tradition to prepare rice flour in our home. Wash and soak the rice in water for 1 hour. After 1 hour, drain the water and spread the rice in a paper towel or a clean white cloth for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, the paper towel would have absorbed the wetness from the rice. The rice should not be very dry also. Take the rice to the mixer and add cardamom. Adding cardamom while grinding itself would make it a nice powder and the rice flour would smell nicely too

• Grind the rice along with the cardamom to a nice powder. The next step is to sieve the rice flour which we have grounded to avoid lumps.

• Take a siever and add the ground rice flour and sieve it to get a smooth rice flour. Add the lumps again if any and grind it again in the mixer. I usually don’t get any lumps. We can also take it to the rice mill if we are going to prepare more quantity. Those who are staying abroad can grind it in mixer itself by grinding rice little by little. Next, we need to roast the rice flour in a pan. Add the sieved rice flour to the pan and keep the flame in medium and stir continuously

• We need to roast the rice flour till the rice flour does not stick to the spatula. We can also test this by taking a pinch of roasted rice flour and we should be able to put a kolam(rangoli) as shown in the picture below. But don’t roast the rice flour too much then they turn into red color or they will get burnt. Even for the store bought rice or Idiappam flour ,we need to do this step. Next we are going to take the grated jaggery in another pan and add water to it and allow the jaggery to dissolve completely. Most of the jaggery will have some sand particles so it is better to strain the jaggery syrup and then again keep in flame and allow it to boil for 2 minutes

• Now add the roasted rice flour and mix well. Initially it may look like forming lumps, but don’t lose the hope, just keep stirring to mix the rice flour nicely in the jaggery syrup. Finally add grated coconut and mix well. Now the Adai dough is ready. Take this in a bowl.

• Make equal size balls out of the adai dough. Take a plastic cover or plantain leaf and grease it with ghee or oil. Keep one ball of the dough on the plastic paper and grease your hand with oil and ghee and press it in hand to make a small circle. We can also use a small flat plate to pat the ball to a small circle

• Heat a tawa and the adai to it. Add a spoon of ghee and roast the adai in low flame. Gentle turn it to other side to fry it on other side

• The yummy Thiruvathirai Adai is ready for Neivedhyam and also for serving. Serve this yummy adai with little ghee or butter on top of it.

Thiruvathirai Adai