When you are born a Bengali then by no way can you keep yourself away from sweets and desserts. And when you think about Bong sweets the first visual that can come to your mind is the ‘rasgullas’ or ‘Roshogolla’ as we call it with the famous Bengali ‘O’ pronunciation.
But the problem is when you are a drifted Bengali living in some other city you don’t get a regular dose of these whenever you want. There are many Bengali sweet shops in Bangalore now-a-days, with chains like K C Das and Bancharam having their outlets in the city. But it’s difficult to go to these shops and get fresh stuffs. And none of them seem to have anything in Electronic City – they need to see the Bengali population here, may be then they’ll know. Anyways I have figured out a non-descriptive Bengali sweet joint in EC who makes good ‘singara’(samosa) and ‘roshogollas’.
But again, what’s better than home cooked fresh rasgullas? I had never done this before. And this recipe is essentially my Dad’s recipe. Did I tell you guys my dad’s a great cook? Actually most of the male members of my family are great cooks (my family not husband’s). But the more interesting thing is my Dad learnt it from his British house sergeant when he was practicing in UK!! Love for food makes people do so many things.
You need to keep in mind few things. They are not exceptionally sweet but are spongy. You can have them chilled or even warm. And you can use rasgullas in other desert as well as in ‘Roshogollar payesh’, ‘Roshomalai’ and some more. Any ways let’s get on to making these little cuties. This is going to be a step by step break up recipe. So Enjoy.
All that you need
Whole Milk – 1 litre
Sugar – 11/2 cup
Water – 4 cups
Lemon juice – 1/4 cup diluted with 1 teaspoon water
See that’s all you need. 4 simple ingredients that everyone has in their pantry.
Let’s Get Started
There are lots of tips for each step so read through them.
1. Boil milk in a large vessel.
[Try taking whole milk or full cream milk and not toned or low fat milk. Full cream milk will yield more cottage cheese and you will get more rasgullas.]
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| Milk boils faster when you boil in a large broad vessel |
2. Once the milk is boiled wait for 1 minute so that the steam goes away and then add the lemon juice. We need to curdle the milk.
After a minute you can see the milk separating into cheese and water.
[Look out for the light greenish liquid on top. When you spot that you know the milk has curdled. DO not hurry in straining out and let the milk separate as much as possible. This way you won’t waste any milk and will yield more cheese]
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| Let the milk curdle properly to avoid wastage |
3. Take a clean muslin cloth and put it on a vessel. Strain the cheese on this muslin cloth, make a small parcel out of it, press and drain all the water out.
[It will be hot at this moment so be careful]
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| Draining the liquid out is very important |
4. We have to wash the cheese in clean water to take out the lemon flavor. Rinse the cheese in the muslin cloth under running water and drain all the water out.
[You can hang this somewhere for 5-10 mins, as you would do for hung curd to drain all the water out]
Now comes the tricky part. You have to mix the cheese well o that there are no lumps and it is all smooth.
5. Mash the cheese well for 10 minutes. Keep it on your work board and keep mashing the cheese till it goes smooth
Separate the cheese in equal parts. Make small round balls and keep aside. 1 litre whole milk will give you 12 balls.
[You need to press them will with your fingers first and then go on to make the balls. This way you will be packing them tight. Or else you can see cracks in them. Keep your hands vertically parallel and make the round balls. This way you will not add pressure from the top and they will be perfectly round.]
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| Make the balls smaller, they will double in size once cooked |
6. Now we need to cook these balls in sugar syrup.
Heat 4 cups of water in a cooker and add 1 cup of sugar
[Add only 1 cup of sugar at this stage, the other half a cup we will use latter. Please take care that you do not make this syrup very thick right now. The rasgullas will not cook if this becomes thick like a ‘chasni’ or a thick syrup]
7. Once heated add the cheese balls, cover and cook for 5 minutes.
[Be very careful of the timing, if you over cook or undercook it will become very hard. You can put a timer if you want]
8. Take out the steam, open the lid and transfer the rasgullas in bowl along with little syrup about 11/2 table spoon syrup . Don’t keep without the syrup else it will stick and loose shape.
[You will see the balls have doubled in size]
9. Add the rest of the sugar in the cooker and make the syrup that you will have with the “Roshogolla’. Add the syrup to the bowl once done. The cooked roshogollas will float in this syrup and you know they are done.
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| Roshogolla done. Now time to Enjoy |
So in about half an hour your little please balls are made.
Go ahead and try out, it’s quite simple. You need to take care of the tips mostly to get perfect spongy ‘Roshogollas’
Do leave a comment below and let me know.
Until next time, Cheers!
2 comments
" just changing the name from roshogolla to rasagulla won't make it Intellectual property of Oriyas.
Rashogolla, like the most sweets in India will always and forever be a Bengali thing. Remember that Bengali households still are known for their amazing food culture and this fact is known world-wide 🙂
tanSEN was bengali my dear friend, so were a lot of other people! want to see the entire list as it stands today? so was subash chandra bose and sri aurobindo 🙂
and i can name a million others and i am proud to say our greateness can be exerted beyond our national borders.
we are the fifth largest speakers!
we bengalis have won pretty much every award in the world stage
you name it we have it and we are damn proud of what we have 🙂
its the only country in the world which took rebellion because it couldn't speak its mother tongue and it won! and won so hard that the UN had to adopt that day as the international language day, which celebrates languages from all over the world. "
KAMONASISH AAYUSH MAZUMDAR
MBA Aircel IMT Ghaziabad (2012 batch)
Location: Bengaluru, Karnataka
Home: Kolkata, WB
in.linkedin.com/in/7thsense
Dear Kamonasish,
Hope you read the post right, it is no where mentioned that 'roshogolla' is an Oriya dessert or an intellectual property of Oriyas. If you have already not guessed from my name, I'm a Bengali myself. So I really don't require such a long lecture on Bengalis.