Rasgulla or Roshogolla

One morning as I lay on my bed, I went down the memory lane and remembered my days in Pune when me and my best friend Tulika used to go for our walks and on our way back home we used to stop by this bengali sweet shop in our area. Tulika being a bengali, ragullas were quite a regular sweet dish at her place. When we used to enter this shop she used to make me try each variant of rasgulla, from cham chams,  ragullas with a coating of kheer on them to my favourite ras malai which is made out of rasgullas... how I miss those days!!!

The urge to have rasgullas grew and i made up my mind that morning to enter my kitchen and prepare this. I wasnt sure if I would be successful but I just went ahead. Ankieta's recipe was helpful again and trust me I was in for a suprise when my rasgullas turned out to be exactly how I used to get them in that bengali shop back in Pune. My happiness knew no bounds when i relished these yummy rasgullas, so I made them again and this time decided to post the recipe to make this mouth watering spongy balls made from chenna or paneer dipped in sugar syrup on my blog.

PREP TIME	COOK TIME	TOTAL TIME
20 mins	45 mins	1 hr 5 mins

Serves:-  15-20 medium sized rasgullas
INGREDIENTS:-

• Whole Milk -  1 ltr
• Vinegar - 2 tbsp
• Water - 8 cups
• Sugar - 2 cups
• Cardamom Powder - 1/2 tsp and a little more or you can also use 5-6 cardamoms.

METHOD:-

• Pour the milk in a clean vessel and bring it to boil. Make sure you keep stirring the milk so that it doesn't burn and keep bringing the cream which settles on the sides of the vessel into the milk.
  
• Once the milk boils switch off the gas and wait for a minute.
•  Add on tablespoon of vinegar into the milk first and give it a stir.
  
• Then add the second spoon of vinegar and stir it again. You will see that the milk is curdling.
  
• Wait for two minutes for it too cool then you will see the milk is curdled. Now take a muslin cloth and pour the curdled milk which is also known as chenna into it. Reserve the whey and keep it aside.
  
• Gather the muslin cloth from the sides and rinse the chenna under running water. this process not only brings down the temperature of the chenna but also removes the taste and smell of vinegar from it. 
• Now gently squeeze to remove the extra water.
• Hang this muslin cloth for 30 minutes.
  
• After 30 minutes, remove chenna from the cloth. Note that the chenna should neither have excess moisture nor should it be very dry.
  
• Gently knead this the chenna with your palms till there are no lumps and create a dough.
  
• Divide this dough into equal parts and shape them into round balls or the shape you prefer. keep this aside. If you feel your chenna balls are too dry you can put all your chenna balls into the whey till the sugar syrup boils.
  
• Now take another vessel. add 7 cups of water, one cup of sugar and cardamom. Bring this to boil.
  
• Once it starts boiling add all the chenna balls into it one by one and cover the lid.
  
• Let this cook on medium flame for 5 minutes. After that boil on low flame for 7 minutes, in total 12 minutes on the flame. The water should create a lot of froth in which the rasgullas should cook. Switch of the flame of the cooking gas and let the lid be covered for another 30 minutes. Make sure you don't open the lid till then.
• Meanwhile take another vessel and add one cup of water and one cup of sugar and bring this to boil. then let this sugar syrup cool for sometime.
  
• After 30 mintues take the rasgullas out one by one and add them in to the sugar syrup.
  
• Refrigerate the rasgullas for atleast 5-6 hrs before serving them.