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HOW TO MAKE SOUTH INDIAN SPECIAL POROTTA |
Porotta is one of the most popular main course dish in the state of Kerala or south Indian. It tastes good when it is served hot with beef curry.
INGREDIENTS
All purpose flour/Maida : 4 Cups(450 gm)
Sugar : 1
tablespoon
Salt
: ½ teaspoon
Water
:
1 ¼ cup (290)
Ghee+ Refined
Oil : 100ml
How To Prepare Step by Step process
- Firstly take 4 cups of all purpose flour/Maida for making porotta. If you are taking a 500 gm packet, take away 50 gm from it 50 gm would be 1 tablespoon less than ½ cup of flour. Remaining flour can be used for dusting while kneading the dough. Then, add 1 tablespoon of sugar in to the flour Sugar is added for taste and to attain a golden brown colour while cooking and add ½ tablespoon of salt to(don’t confuse tablespoon and teaspoon). Then, mix them well. Now lets add ½ cup of water and and knead well. water should always be in room temperature. Now add ¾ cup of water and knead well with hand. Here, in total, we have added 1 ¼ cup of water in measuring cup. That would be around 290 gm.in bread making, the amount of water is mentioned in percentage, after trial and error method, here found out 64% hydration is needed for porotta. That means, for 100 gm flour, you need 64 gm water in short the dough of porotta will need slightly more water than that of chappathi. The dough should be sicky lie this after 2 minutes of kneading.
- After this, we need to kneed the dough on a clean kitchen counter top. Then, to prevent sticking, dust the counter top top using flour, keep the dough on the counter top and knead like this for a minimum of 15 minutes. first, knead the dough in rolling motion for about 1 minute .it tends to stick while doing so. Now using both hands, knead the dough like this in stretchy motion. If at all the dough starts to stick to the top, just roll it like this. The counter top should be free of any dough sticking on to it, so clean the top as you spot any sticking using a knife, else it will lead to further sticking. Dust again with flour and continue kneading. we get really soft and chewy porotta by kneading in stretchy motion. Add oil or egg, it makes the porotta soft, but I wonder how much of that is theoretically correct. Because the soft and chewy nature of porotta is attained by a strong gluten structure created while kneading in stretchy motion, Gluten is a group of proteins in grains like wheat, barley and semolina, there are mainly two proteins namely glutenin and gliadin powders of these grain when comes in contact with water, These proteins mix to from a group of proteins, gluten. when we add content like oil, glute in and gliadin won’t combine properly, thus preventing the formation of sufficient gluten. where as adding salt helps in the information of more gluten. Also maximum gluten is produced while adding 68% water, but it will be difficult for us to make porotta then.
- Now arises the obvious question,” Gluten is good for health or not!?”.Gluten should be avoided by people having celiac disease, an autoimmune disease. There are no scientific studies stating that others cannot have food having gluten. Another common question is “is flour good for health or not?” The answer is that flour does not do any benefit to health. Here it is(Maida) kneaded for 15 minutes, now the dough is really soft and has an elastic nature. Now take 100 ml of ghee and refined oil mixture. Both should be in equal amount. If ghee is not available, you may use melted butter too. Else you may use refined oil alone. parotta will taste better if ghee or butter is used. Now take a bowl like this and grease it with ghee place the dough in it and grease the top with ghee and cover it with a moist towel. towel should be moist and not dripping wet. Now cover it with a lid and let it rest for at least 1 hour. If possible, let it rest for 2 hours. Its been 2 hours now. The dough is very soft now. On a clean counter top, apply ghee well. Then, keep the parotta dough on the top and slice it into two. Take one half in your hand and by gentle upward pushing motion, make balls like this. Here can make 8 balls like this with he dough that we have prepared. Now prevent drying, apply ghee on top and cover it with a moist towel its very important to prevent it from drying, right from kneading dough to cooing. If you are making it in large quantities, after making each ball, apply oil and cover them with moist towel well, Now let it rest for a minimum of 20 minutes. It’s almost 20 minutes now. We can notice that the dough has become more soft after resting. Now let’s roll it well. Then Apply ghee well on the clean counter top. Take a ball of dough, apply ghee and spread it gently with hands like this. You need not apply too much pressure for this. We should use refined oil or ghee generously to spread the dough. Only then you will be able to make soft parottas. Spread it to the maximum in a rectangular shape. Here we’ve spread it really well. Now apply ghee again. Where ever here mentioned ghee, it’s an equal amount of ghee and oil mixed together.
- Ghee tends to become hard if used alone That’s why here using it as a mixture. Now dust some flour on top. Spread the dusted flour well. Here using flour and ghee mixture so as to make well layered parottas. Lets roll it now. we’re can use 2 methods here. Method one is to cut it with a knife like this and roll. Slices should be 1.5 cm wide. Do not make it smaller that this as it will be difficult to spread and cook later And apply some ghee mixture on your hand and push the slices inside .Then take it in the hand and pull slightly and roll it. You may even roll it in the hand itself. Tuck the end of the roll to the middle portion from below and secure it well .else it will unravel while spreading. Here you can see the beautiful layers of parotta.
- Then apply ghee mix again and cover it with a moist towel. After 15 minutes, now take the first roll that we have prepared. Then the first roll should be taken in the beggining and the last one should be taken at the end. Resting time would be optimum for all the rolls by doing so. Now press gently and spread. Do not make it thin like a chappathi. It should be slightly thicker. If you make it thin, while lifting it up from the counter top, the layers will fall off. Now gently lift it from the counter top and cook it on a heated pan. It would be better to cook the base portion first. The flame should be always kept in a medium level. When the colour on top changes ,apply ghee mix and flip it. Then apply ghee mix on the other side too. Parotta will be soft and tasty only by applying ghee or oil. After sometime flip again. like each side be cooked at least 3 times second and there cooking can be done faster. After cooked well you can see the golden brown flakes. After making two or three parottas, stack and crush them using clapping motion. Cooked parottas should be kept closed so as to retain heat. Parottas should be warm while stacking and crushing in order to form layers. 3 parottas are ready here. lets stack and crush them. Crush them using clapping motion. Now you can see the layer of parotta here. Finally the tasty PAROTTA is ready to serve.
