Ingredients
Sweet
- 200 gfine gram flour, besan
- 400 gsugar
- 150 mlwater
- 400 gghee
- 100 mloil, optional, for easier handling
Optional
- ½ tspground cardamom
- a pinch of salt
Equipment
- a greased tray
- a heavy pan
- a second pan for the ghee
Directions
- Sift the gram flour twice, and this is not optional. Grease a tray and have it ready beside the stove, because the finished mixture sets within a minute. Keep the ghee hot in a separate pan over a low flame throughout. Hot ghee poured into hot mixture is the entire technique.
- Boil the sugar and water together to one-string consistency, about 110°C (230°F). The one-string test: lift a drop between finger and thumb, and it should pull a single thread as they part.
- Turn the heat to low and add the roasted gram flour to the syrup in a steady stream, whisking hard. Add it in a stream and whisk without stopping, because besan tipped in at once lumps instantly. Now begin adding the hot ghee, a ladleful at a time, stirring constantly.
- Wait until each ladleful has been fully absorbed before adding the next. The mixture will bubble and rise dramatically as it takes the ghee, which is exactly what should happen.
- Keep going until the mixture turns pale, loses its shine, and starts leaving the sides of the pan. The moment to stop is when the ghee begins to separate at the edges and the mixture looks foamy and light.
- Work fast now and stir hard, because it goes from ready to overcooked in under thirty seconds. Pour it into the greased tray immediately and level the top with a spatula. Mark it into squares or diamonds while it is still hot and soft.
- Score it within a minute of pouring. Let it cool 20 minutes, then break along the marks. It should be pale gold and crumble under light pressure, melting rather than chewing.
Technique
- The quantity of ghee is genuinely enormous and reducing it gives a dense sweet rather than a porous one.
- Any ghee that separates out can be poured off and reused.
- It keeps a week in a tin at room temperature.
Substitutions
- Part oil in place of some ghee, which makes it easier to handle and less good.
- Clarified butter made at home, in place of shop-bought ghee.
Variations
- The dense fudgy version, made with less ghee.
- With cardamom or saffron.
- Ghee mysore pak, the richest style.
History
A dense, rich sweet made from gram flour, ghee and sugar, cooked together until it sets into a fudge-like block, invented in the kitchens of the Mysore Palace in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, generally credited to a royal chef named Kakasura Madappa, who is said to have created the sweet for the Maharaja of Mysore in the early 1900s, naming it directly after the city and royal court where it originated. Its extremely generous use of ghee, clarified butter, relative to the other ingredients gives Mysore pak its distinctively rich, melt-in-the-mouth texture, and the sweet spread well beyond its royal palace origins into wider popularity across Karnataka and India more broadly over the following decades. It remains one of South India’s most recognized traditional sweets.
Frequently asked questions
What is Mysore Pak?
Mysore Pak is a dessert from India: fudgy gram-flour sweet drenched in ghee, cut into porous golden squares. A dense, rich sweet made from gram flour, ghee and sugar, cooked together until it sets into a fudge-like block, invented in the kitchens of the Mysore Palace in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, generally credited to a royal chef named Kakasura Madappa, who is said to have created the sweet for the Maharaja of Mysore in the early 1900s, naming it directly after the city and royal court where it originated. Its extremely generous use of ghee, clarified butter, relative to the other ingredients gives Mysore pak its distinctively rich, melt-in-the-mouth texture, and the sweet spread well beyond its royal palace origins into wider popularity across Karnataka and India more broadly over the following decades. It remains one of South India’s most recognized traditional sweets.
How long does Mysore Pak take to make?
Mysore Pak takes 15 min of preparation and 30 min of cooking. The recipe makes about 24 pieces. It is rated hard to make.
What can I substitute in Mysore Pak?
Yes, within limits. Part oil in place of some ghee, which makes it easier to handle and less good. Clarified butter made at home, in place of shop-bought ghee.
What is the most important thing to get right in Mysore Pak?
Sift the gram flour twice, and this is not optional. Grease a tray and have it ready beside the stove, because the finished mixture sets within a minute. Keep the ghee hot in a separate pan over a low flame throughout. Hot ghee poured into hot mixture is the entire technique.
