கடலை மிட்டாய் – Kadala Mittai

Kadala mittai is a popular, traditional South Indian sweet, made from roasted peanuts and jaggery also known as peanut chikki or brittle. Kadalai mittai is very famous in Kovilpatti, Tamil Nadu. It’s a crunchy, sweet and nutritious snack, rich in protein, iron, and often flavoured with cardamom. This is a quick recipe but the main part is getting the right consistency of the jaggery syrup right.

Ingredients for Kadala Mittai

Peanuts – 1 cup
Jaggery – 1 cup
Ghee – 1 tbs
Cardamom powder – 1/8 tsp

Directions

Pre-preparation

Grease a pan with ghee which you will transfer the mittai to set. 

Jaggery Syrup

Add the jaggery in a pan with 1/4 cup of water.
Heat the jaggery mix until it dissolves completely in water.
Filter the jaggery syrup. 
Pour the filtered jaggery syrup into a pan again.
Add the ghee and heat the syrup in medium flame. 
Stir the syrup occasionally to avoid sticking into the pan.
Keep a small bowl with water. 
Add the jaggery syrup in water to check the consistency. 
The syrup should not dissolve. It should be thick and able to make ball.
When you can take out the syrup ball, check whether it is breakable or not. 
When it is breakable, the syrup is ready.

Mittai

Now add the peanuts and cardamom powder to syrup. 
Mix everything well and transfer it to the ghee greased pan.
Set the mixture evenly by pressing the mix with back of the spoon.
Flip the pan in a wax paper.
Cut the kadalai mittai immediately otherwise we can’t slice the mittai.
Let the mittai to cool down completely. 
Kadala mittai ready.

Notes

I’m using roasted, skin removed, unsalted peanuts. If you have raw peanuts, roast the peanuts in microwave and remove the skin.

Pictures

Pre-preparation

Jaggery Syrup

Mittai

This recipe is brought to you by Nish from Nish’s recipes at nishrecipes.com