Vermicelli Payesh

Vermicelli Payesh is a mouthwatering sweet dish that is popular all over India. In the market vermicelli is available in two types - fried & non-fried. For non-fried vermicelli you need to take an extra effort to fry them in ghee, but with fried vermicelli you dont need to do that extra work. It is already fried in ghee before being packaged for sale. Fried Vermicelli is my favourite cause I can relaxingly skip one extra step during preparation of payesh.

Ingredients:                                          Cooking time: 50 minutes approx

1 cup of fried vermicelli

1 litre of full-fat milk

5 tbs sugar or more as per your sweet craving

1/4 cup of broken dry fruits including cashew nuts and raisins

1 tsp of ghee

Method:

1)  Take a non-sticky pan and boil the milk on medium heat till cream forms on the top. Then turn the heat to low & keep stirring the milk so that it does not stick to the bottom of the pan. The reason why I prefer cooking payesh in non-sticky pan is even if you stir occasionally, it will not burn at the bottom whereas cooking in a normal pan involves diligent stirring & if you want to give your hand rest for few minutes, milk becomes brown at the bottom.

2) When milk will reduce to half of its quantity, add vermicelli. Cook for 5 minutes & then add sugar.

3) Continue stir cooking till vermicelli becomes soft. Please be careful of overcooking vermicelli. If you overcook vermicelli, it will become sticky to each other & wont taste as nice as properly cooked vermicelli does.

4) Just as vermicelli becomes soft, turn off the heat and let payesh cool down a bit.

5) In a separate pan, fry the dry fruits in ghee and as raisins start ballooning up, turn off the heat and pour the mixture of dry fruits over the payesh. Mix properly.

6) Refrigerate the payesh for an hour or two. Serve cold.