Puranpoli for Holi – Maharashtrian style- A Step-by Step Recipe | How to make Puranpoli
2013-03-23- Cuisine: Indian, Maharashtrian, Saraswat & Konkani
- Course: Dessert, Mains
- Skill Level: Expert
- Add to favorites
- Yield : 20
- Servings : 10-12
- Prep Time : 30m
- Cook Time : 30m
- Ready In : 1:25 h
Holi celebrates the arrival of spring… and what a celebration! It is the most colourful festival in India. We play with colours, and there are bonfires at night.
And of course, no festival is complete without food. Every festival has its own special delicacy.
Different states make different sweets for this occasion. In Maharashtra, Puranpoli, a sort of paratha with a sweet dal stuffing is made specially for Holi.
Puran is the sweet stuffing made with dal and jaggery, while the outer cover is the poli!
“Holi re holi, puranachi poli..” is a song sung in Maharashtra, which implies that Holi is not complete without eating puranpoli!
How I miss those childhood songs and the bonfires..
This is a time consuming recipe, but not very hard if you follow all the steps. Specially lovers of Puran poli like myself, will go that extra mile to make it.
Do try it, it is delicious, I promise!
Ingredients
- For the Puran ( Stuffing )
- Chana Dal - 1 kg
- Jaggery - yellow- best quality - 1/2 kg
- Sugar - 1/2 kg
- Cardamom powder - from 10-12 cardamoms about 1 tsp
- Saffron - 1 pinch
- Salt - 1 pinch
- For the Poli ( Roti )
- Suji - 1 cup ( the smallest you can find )
- Atta ( whole wheat flour )- 1 cup
- Flour ( maida) - 2 cups
- Oil - 1/2 cup
- Salt to taste
Method
For the Dough
Put the semolina (suji) in a flat dish or a large bowl that you can use to knead later and soak the semolina in 1 cup of water. After an hour, mix in the flour (maida), whole wheat flour (atta) and salt. Knead to a loose dough. Keep adding a little oil while kneading. Pour over the rest of the oil after you have finished kneading. It may look like of a ton of oil, but remember this is what keeps the dough so stretchy. You will soon find out why you need an extra stretchy dough. Cover the bowl with a cling film and leave to rest for about an hour.
For the Puran
Wash the chana dal. Add turmeric and oil and pressure cook till soft. Make sure you add enough water, as the chana dal tends to swell up while cooking and becomes very hard if there is less water and is then unsuitable for making puran. Adding 3 times as much water, is good . If there is excess water, it can then be drained out after the dal is cooked.
Cook the chana dal in a pressure cooker. Remove the extra water. Put the dal with the jaggery in a heavy bottomed pan on medium heat. Making the puran is quite laborious, as it involves a lot of stirring to prevent the dal from getting stuck at the bottom. As the jaggery melts, the mixture has more liquid than before and is now dangerous as it starts to caramelise at the bottom. This is to be prevented at all costs as it could make the puran very hard and bitter.
So the key is low flame and constant stirring. Slowly, the mixture will start thickening again. Continue stirring till it is thick enough. Remember that the mixture still continues to thicken after it has been switched off, so a good test to figure whether the puran is done is to throw a heavy flat ladle into it. It it stands upright, the puran is done it is thick enough; but if it falls , then the puran still needs thickening.
When done, and cooled, the puran is put through a machine called a puran yantra, quite like a potato ricer or a mincer, that ensures that the mixture that comes out is very soft, without any hard bits or uncooked dal. I tend to simplify this process by putting it into a food processor. Notice the consistency of the puran in the bowl, that is what you are trying to achieve.. very very soft.
Another shortcut is to make the puran a day ahead. It stays well in the refrigerator if stored in an airtight box. Please remember that at no cost is the puran to be left open, as air starts hardening the chana dal.
The Preparation
Make equal numbers of balls of of the dough and Puran. Notice the difference in size of the balls you need to make. The puran ball is 3 times larger than the dough.
Now the key to a good puran poli, is the amount of puran that is put in. Although this looks like a paratha, note that the paratha has much less stuffing than the puran poli. A good puran poli has 3 times as much stuffing as the cover. Only this ensures a fabulous tasting puranpoli.
Make as many as you want. It is very difficult to match the amount of puran with the dough, Sometimes, you will have puran left over, sometimes dough. The dough can easily be made into puris some other day, and the puran gets happily eaten away or converted into Karanji, unless you want to make puranpolis again.
At this stage you realise, that your puranpoli is the product of your karma. If you have been very diligent in making the puran and have a very soft puran, rolling out the puran poli is going to be a very easy task.. But beware, if your puran has poky hard caramelised bits, it is going to break the puran poli.
Anyway, enough of philosophy. Roll out the dough into a small disc. Put puran on top. Gather the ends around at the top ,as you would for a paratha and pinch out the excess.
Flatten and roll it out very thin. Do not bother about the shape. Without putting too much pressure, roll it out as thin and as large as you can. Now you realise the why you need those copious amounts of oil. If you have been stingy with the oil , you will face a problem at this stage when you need a very very stretchy dough. Sprinkle a bit of rice flower, or atta, on the rolling surface to make it easier.
Now the cooking bit. As the poli is so fragile and large, it is not recommended to lift it up as you would a roti.
Instead, roll it onto the rolling pin and then transfer delicately onto a hot tawa (griddle). While putting it onto the tawa, unroll it from the pin.
Cook the puran poli on each side till it has large brown spots. In Karnataka, they fry the puran poli in oil, like a paratha. However in most Brahmin households in Maharashtra and Goa, the poli is roasted dry and served with some hot ghee (clarified butter).
Roll out as many as you can and have a stack of polis ready. Believe me, these disappear very very quickly.
Most would agree that it is best eaten with a dollop of ghee. Although to be honest, I haven’t quite been able to decide what tastes best with it — a bowlful of milk or just the ghee!
Oh the lovely aroma of puranpoli!Just in time for Holi.
Gr8 ! vaishali. Compelled me to try this time. Till date, just avoided it doing & relished Aai’s makhmali puranpolis & spicy katache saar.
Geeta , that’s terrific. Do let me know how it goes.
Thanks for the likes ! Hope at least some of you make this for Holi!
I guess someone in Nc viz .. soham n arjun are delighted specially on yr posting Mimi !!!
I made them day before too..am kind of struggling to get good brand of gul:(
Preeti.. that’s the whole problem.
🙁
बाई ! काय मस्त लिहिते तू! Ha ha ha!
Feels nice and yummy, even just to read thru.
Best line, I liked, in this recipe: “At this stage you realise, that your puranpoli is the product of your karma.”. Hope to try it out one day too. 🙂
Thanks so much ! Nakki try kar ani sang mala.:)
I am completely in love with this post. As a child, I remember my aaji making the dough the first thing in the morning and mami rolling out puran polis. Aaji then turned them into khaparachi puran pol with those driving motion of hands. Can the same dough recipe from this post be used for khaprachi poli ?
“At this stage you realise, that your puranpoli is the product of your karma” 🙂 Vaishali, you should take up writing,(something in addition to your recipes) ; unless you already have.
Thanks Bharat! I guess I should. That bit of ‘writing’ has got me many comments 🙂 haha
I guess it’s not an easy task and one can be rest assured that some good ups will happen in the first go
Great!!!!
if water in puran while cooking becomes excess and puran have become very wet whct should be done plz rply
Remove the excess water, drain it out. It can be used to make katachi aamti.
Then cook puran to the required consistency.
हाय वैशाली,
यावेळी अगदी तुझ्या कृतीप्रमाणे पुरणपोळ्या केल्या. नेहमी डाळ आणि पुरण मायक्रोवेव्हमध्ये करायचो. यंदा डाळ कुकरमध्ये शिजवली. पुरणातला डाव उभा राहीपर्यंत पुरण गॅसवर शिजवले. तरीही मायक्रोवेव्हमध्ये एक मिनिट चटका द्यावा लागलाच. (पुरण फ़ुडप्रोसेसरमध्ये फ़िरवून घेतल्यावर सैल वाटले होते)
कणीक मात्र अगदी तू लिहिलेल्या प्रमाणात तेल घालून केली (जे आधी कधी केले नव्हते) नेहमी मैदा टाळायचो तोही वापरला. (कणीक मळण्याचे आणि गोळे भरण्याचे डिपार्टमेंट आईचे…मला हात ’मळून’ घ्यायला आवडत नाही. 😉 )
अगदी कणकेच्या तिप्पट नाही तरी दुपटीपेक्षा जरा जास्तच पुरण भरून पाहण्याचे धाडस केले. लाटताना पोळ्या पोळपाटाला चिकटण्याची भीती वाटत होती. त्यासाठी एका कुकरी शोमध्ये पाहिल्याप्रमाणे एक पंचा भिजवून, घट्ट पिळून पोळपाटाला बांधून, त्यावर तांदूळ-पिठी पसरून, पोळ्या लाटल्या.
मस्त लुसलुशीत पोळ्या झाल्या. पुरणपोळीची परीक्षा तिच्या काठात असते म्हणतात, त्यातही स्वत:च पूर्ण मार्क्स देऊन टाकले.(credit of course goes to the perfect guide)
किचनचा ताबा मी घेतल्यापासून आम्ही कडक पुरणपोळ्या किंवा पुरणपुर्या खायचो. या होळीला पुरणपोळ्याच खाल्ल्या. 🙂
So Thanks a ton for the fool-proof recipe.
I hope I have burnt more calories in making puranpoli than I added by eating them.
Thanks a lot for the kind words, Bharat! I am so happy that you like this recipe. It is specially dear to me because it is my Mum’s recipe.
Hey Vaishali I have tried this recipe but I used while wheat flory instead of maida. It’s turned out very well. Many thanks
Very nice…with small small important tips and explainations at each level.
Thanks so much Aboli!
Hey Vaishali-Made it today!!my second attempt to make puran poli!!It tasted great.I need more practise though to roll it real thin!!I had never heard of sooji being added to make the dough but I liked this healthy option alongwith whole wheat flour!!Cheers🤗
Thanks Smita! It is an unusual combination, but yum. My mum used to make this regularly, so I continue the same way!