Who doesn’t love an Andhra style Paruppu Podi? In Tamilnadu if you order vegetarian thali meals, the first thing they serve is Hot Rice, Ghee and generous spoons of Paruppu Podi. It is different from the ones that we usually make at home. Amma prepares Paruppu Podi with Toor Dal, Black Pepper,Jeera and Red Chillies. The texture won’t be very smooth & fine. In some restaurants in TN every lunch table used to have small setup of three jars filled with Paruppu Podi & 2 types of Pickles. After trying out SouthIndian meals at various small restaurants, we love the delicious ParuppuPodi served in Chrompet Balaji Bhavan. It has that perfect smooth texture, bright orange color, perfect accompaniments that are usually served in SouthIndian lunch menu. You cannot stop yourselves from eating atleast three to four servings of rice.
When I saw my favourite chef Venkatesh Bhat share his style of Paruppu Podi recipe in his youtube I immediately tried it today.Made few changes to the original recipe. I didn’t add Curry leaves, Jeera Seeds, Whole Kashmiri Red Chillies in this recipe. I took the base recipe and depending on the ingredients available at my home I modified his recipe
The following measurement yielded me around 1.5 cups of Podi. Wish I had taken proper step by step pictures. My phone was very low on storage and had to borrow husband’s phone for few seconds to take one final pic of the lunch plate & a short video for instagram reels. I served it with Arbi Roast and Brinajl Thokku.
| Prep Time | 5 minutes |
| Cook Time | 15 minutes |
| Servings |
cups
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- 3/4 cup toor dal
- 3/4 cup moong dal
- 3/4 cup Roasted Gram/பொட்டு கடலை
- 8-10 Garlic Cloves
- 1/2 cup Desiccated Coconut
- 4 Dried Red Chillies depending on the variety you have, increase or decrease the quantity of chillies. I used the long red ones
- 1/2 tbsp Rock Salt/கல் உப்பு
- 1/2 tbsp Hing/பெருங்காயம்
- 1 teaspoon sesame oil
- 1 tbsp Garlic Powder (optional)
- 1 tbsp Kashmiri Red Chilli Powder (optional)
- 2 teaspoon Jaggery Powder
Ingredients
Ingredients to be dry roasted
Other Ingredients
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- Take a pan and heat it on a medium flame. Once the pan is hot add Toor Dal
- Dry roast until the dal is golden brown. Remove the dal from pan and keep it on a plate aside
- Next similarly dry roast moong dal and roasted gram. Keep them aside
- Peel a Garlic pod and take around 10 Garlic cloves. The garlic that I usually buy here is slightly bigger in size. Hence I used only 10 cloves. However if you like to have more garlicky flavor in the podi you can add few more cloves
- Dry roast them for 3-5 minutes. Keep them aside
- Add a teaspoon of Sesame Oil and add Dried Red chillies. Once the chillies are roasted remove them from pan and add desiccated coconut. Roast the coconut for few seconds. Turn off the flame
- Now all the ingredients are roasted and are ready to be powdered
- Add them all together in a mixie jar along with Rock Salt, Hing, Jaggery Powder
- Grind them to a fine powder.
- Now taste the powder and depending on your preference you can add extra Garlic Powder if you want. I was skeptical initially to add too much of whole Garlic while roasting the ingredients. This way I was able to adjust as per our taste.
- Also add that one table spoon of Kashmiri Red Chilli powder, and mix them all together with a spoon
- Once everything is mixed sieve the powder twice like how we used to do for any Flours before baking
- This step ensured a smooth textured Paruppu Podi like how it is served in Restaurants. Managed to take one pic today morning in natural light. This is the color of the podi.
- Delicious Paruppu Podi is ready to be served.
- Do try the recipe and let me know your feedback. Would love to hear from you
1. I didn't have whole Kashmiri Red Chillies at home.Hence used Kashmiri Red Chilli Powder to add a lovely color to the Podi.
2. Adding Garlic Powder at the end is optional. If you love Garlic you can add 5-6 extra cloves of garlic while roasting itself and skip this step.
3. If you don't have Desiccated Coconut skip that step. Don't substitute it with fresh coconut. Shelf life of the podi might be decreased
4. Sieving the powder at the end is just get that perfect smooth texture. If you are ok with slightly coarse powder then you can store the podi as it is