Zarda is traditional sweet rice that often serves in weddings in place of dessert. Cooking perfect zerda is tricky because usually rice gets hard.
This is one of easy and tried and tested Zarda Recipe with right amount of ingredients. Carefully follow it and prepare delicious zarda for your family.
Don’t forget to share your feedback in comments.
Homemade Zarda Recipe
Author: Nazish Sultan
Prep time: 10 mins
Cook time: 50 mins
Total time: 1 hour
Serves: 8
Ingredients
- Desi ghee 1/2 cup
- Sela Rice 1 kg
- Sugar 1 kg
- Green Cardamom 3 to 4 pcs
- Food colors yellow, green and Red
For Topping (quantity as desired)
- Khoya
- Green and Red Ashrfian
- Pethay ki mithai
- Ras gullay
- Pistachio
- Almond
- Raisin (Kishmish)
- Dried coconut slices
Instructions
- Soak Sela rice for three hours, prior to boiling.
- For boiling, separately boil half cups each of rice with yellow, red and green colors, when rice are done strain the water and set aside.
- Boil the rest of soaked rice till cooked (without any color) and strain them too.
- Now you have a big quantity of white rice, and colored rice in three colors.
- Heat ghee in pan and add green cardamom, after it gives aroma, add 1 kg sugar and 1 cup of water at once.
- Stir continuously till the sugar dissolves and sugar syrup (sheera) is ready. It will take around 5 to 8 minutes to dissolve the sugar.
- Then add white boiled rice and give it a mix and cover the lid. In start, the whole sugar will release water so we have to keep flame high initially for about 10 to 15 minutes.
- Add nuts in between.
When you see that water is dried then slow down the heat and add the colored rice on top. - Keep the rice on dam till all water evaporates about 10-15 minutes.
- Now mix all rice.
- Dish out and decorate with khoya, nuts, ashrafis and petha.
- Put colored ras gullay on top and serve immediately.
Note
We can not mix all colored rice at the start because it can leave color.[br]If sugar is not dissolving completely to make sugar syrup, don’t wait for it and add boiled rice.