Carrot Kheer using Jaggery || Carrot Payasam with Jaggery

 Carrots has a bright colour and it looks more attractive when we prepare any recipes using them. Carrots are naturally sweet in taste and kids would love to have them in any kind of recipes. But some kids may not like the taste. So mommies! Learn and cook some delicious meals using bright carrots so that your kids enjoy the taste. 

If you skip adding carrots to the diet, one can miss its numerous advantages. Carrots are excellent source of beta-carotene and it improves eye sight. It helps to combat with Vitamin A deficiency when consumed regularly. The dietary fiber present in them cleanses the body and it helps to relieve from constipation.

The recipe I made here is very delicious and healthy too since I used jaggery as a sweetener instead of regular sugar. The taste will be similar to the normal one made with sugar. But I prefer to replace regular white sugar with rock sugar or jaggery. You can also use date syrup instead of jaggery in order to make it more healthy. I also added handful of nuts in the recipe since my kid love to have them in the middle while having the kheer.. but it will be helpful to make our payasam more thick.

Now let's go through the recipe process.

INGREDIENTS:

Carrots - 5 to 6 medium size (approx 300 gm)

Milk - 500 ml

Elachi powder - half teaspoon

Nuts:

Almonds - soaked and peeled approx 10 to15

Cashew nuts- 10 to 15

Pista - 10 to 15

Jaggery- half cup

Water- 2 teaspoon (to dissolve jaggery) and half cup to boil carrots.

 PROCESS:

1. First wash the carrots thoroughly with water and scrape them if any dirt is present on them. 

2. Chop the carrots roughly into small pieces and add them into a pressure cooker. Pour some water (approx 150 ml) or until the carrots are slightly immersed into the water. Cook the carrots for 2 whistles in a low flame.

3. Allow the pressure to go off and open the lid. The carrot should be perfectly cooked and it should be nice and soft when we press it using our fingers or with a spoon. Allow the boiled carrots to become cool for sometime.

4. Meanwhile you can take a vessel and pour milk into it. Boil the milk in a very low flame.

5. After cooling the boiled carrots for sometime, transfer them into a blender jar along with the water that is used to boil them and also some nuts(few soaked and peeled almonds, cashew nuts and pista). Make a smooth carrot puree out of it.

6. While the milk is allowed to boil (or see you a foam on top of it) add the prepared carrot puree and start stirring using a laddle in a very low flame for about 10 minutes.

7. After you observing the bubbling sound or foam on top of milk, add the elachi powder and keep stirring continuously for about 2 minutes.

8. Add the chopped nuts (soaked and peeled almonds, pista and cashews) into the payasam and boil for 5 more minutes and switch off the flame and allow this to cool for sometime inorder to mix the jaggery syrup later.

9. Now to prepare jaggery syrup, add jaggery into another vessel and add 2 tablespoons of water and switch on the flame to low. Boil this until you can see the bubbles on top of it or until the jaggery gets dissolved into the water completely. Allow this jaggery syrup to cool completely.

10. Now mix the cooled jaggery syrup into our prepared payasam/ kheer and mix thoroughly until both gets combined. 

This kheer tastes better when it is slightly chilled according to my choice. If you want have it with little bit warm you can as per your choice. 

Our healthy carrot kheer/payasam is ready to be served. 

Cooking tips:

1. Instead of using Jaggery you can use either Dates powder or Dates syrup. You can substitute with 1/2 cup of Dates syrup or 1 cup of Dates powder and it can be directly added to boiling milk after adding nuts.

2. To prepare jaggery syrup, always prepare in a separate vessel and allow this to cool completely before you add it into the milk. If you add directly into hot milk, it may gets curdle.

3. Adding nuts to the recipe is entirely optional. In order to make the dessert more thick or creamier I added some nuts while preparing puree. You can also substitute it with sunflower and pumpkin seeds too. This step is added in order to increase the protein content in the recipe.

Thanks for reading my blog post. If you like my recipes do follow my blog 'Yummy HEALthy' to know more interesting and healthier recipes for your kids.