chanar jeelabi or Bengali chanar jilipi with step by step picture format.is my today’s recipe, with its nice brown texture and juicy, soft and succulent nature. This chanar jeelabi or paneer jalebi is one of my favorite sweets.
This 10 years of my Bangalore days I really missed that Kolkata’s soft and juicy chanar jilipi. I’ve tasted chenna jalebi or paneer jalebi from sweets shops in Bangalore but I was not able to get that authentic taste what I’ve tasted in Kolkata. So I’ve started making it in my kitchen and after a long time of practice, finally, I made it correctly.
A good quality chanar jilipi or #paneer jalebi will simply meltdown in your mouth and my Chenna jalebi or paneer jalebi or chanar jeelipi is one of them. Don’t need to trust on my words, simply follow my recipe step by step and your perfect chenna jalebi will be ready to enjoy. Bengali festivals, celebrations and even to welcome our guests, Bengali sweets don’t have any competitor.
When a dough is prepared with chenna or chana, soft khoya, maida, ghee, little sugar and flavored with cardamoms, and later the dough is divided into equal sized balls, then let the balls turn into a long cylindrical shape with the same width. Swirl it up or give a shape like a pretzel or just make a coil with it. Pour those pretzels into the hot ghee or refined oil and fry it till gets nice brown texture and simply dip it into a cardamom flavored sugar syrup for hours, and the result will be soft, juicy, nice brown colored Chanar jeelabi or chanar jeelipi.
It’s basically famous among Bengalis from India to Bangladesh and people from Odisha also have its own version. Though as per my experience, the making of sweets or desserts are little tricky and time-consuming too, but if the ingredients ratios are just perfect then nobody can beat you in making of it. As I personally prefer to use khoya in it so today I’ll describe my Chanar jeelabi or #Bengali chanar jilipi or paneer jalebi with khoya. But the khoya should be the soft khoya.
For making chenna or chana, please check my Chenna or chana recipe or how to make chana or chenna at home.
You may like my one more Bengali sweet chadrapuli Sandesh recipe, Sandesh recipe, gulab jamun recipe with milk powder recipe.
And my next post is homemade khoya recipe or mawa recipe for basically preparing sweets.
Please let me know how this chanar jeelabi or chanar jilipi works at your home by leaving a comment in the comment section below.
chanar jeelabi | how to make chanar jilipi step by step | paneer jalebi recipe
Ingredients
For making the Chenna dough
- 1/2 cup Chenna or chana(from my chenna recipe)
- 3 tbsp soft khoya or mawa (from my homemade khoya recipe)
- 3 tbsp maida or all purpose flour
- 2 tbsp milk
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 tsp ghee or clarified butter
- 1 black cardamom
- 1/4 tsp green cardamom powder
- 1 pinch baking soda
- pistachios for garnishing
For frying the paneer jalebi:
- refined oil for deep frying
- 1/4 tbsp ghee
For making the sugar syrup:
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 1/2 cup water
- 2-3 green cardamom
Prep time: 15 mins
Cook time: 15 mins
Served in: 2 hr 30 mins
Course: sweet/ dessert
Cuisine: Bengali/ Indian
Servings: 5-6
Author: Moumita
How to make chanar jeelabi or chanar jilipi
Instructions
How to make sugar syrup of the Chanar jeelabi or chanar jilipi:
- Take a bowl, add 1 cup of sugar with 1 1/2 cup of water and 2-3 green cardamom in it.
- Let the sugar melts down in the water and boils it for 4-5 mins on high flame. When it will be a little thick(little sticky not too thick) then switch off the flame and cover the sugar syrup.
How to prepare the Chanar jeelabi or chanar jilipi:
- First, take the Chenna or chana(see my Chenna or chana recipe) on a plate and knead the Chenna very well with the heel of our palm. Make a smooth soft Chenna by kneading it continuously at least for 3-4 mins.
- Then take a mixing bowl, add well needed Chenna, soft khoya(see my khoya recipe), maida or all purpose flour, sugar, baking soda, ghee, black cardamom seeds and green cardamom powder to it. Mix it nicely.
- If the khoya is little hard, then go to the tips portion below, where I’ve described how to make soft khoya.
- Start kneading all together with the heel of the palm(as Chenna has to be kneaded) and turn it into a smooth dough.
- Now, divide the dough into 5-6 equal sized balls and give each ball a 5-inch long cylindrical shape.
- Then first, grease the rolling board and your palm with little ghee and then take one end of this cylinder and twist it and press its(stick it) end on the cylinders wall to make a number nine with it. And then take the other end of the cylinder and make a round shape with it then press it(stick it) on the number nine’s mouth.
- Even you can give it a shape like a pretzel or 2-3 twist is also fine for making this sweet. If the crack appears while giving it a shape, then use a little ghee on your fingertip and gently press the cracks with your fingertips.
- Now, take a deep bottom pan, place it on low flame. Add refined oil and ghee to it for deep frying the Chenna jalebis. Jalebis should sink into the oil-ghee mix.
- Slowly add the 3-4 jalebis in the oil( not hot oil), don’t add more jalebis at a time that may cause of broken jalebis.
- fry the jalebis until gets nice brown colour from both sides.
- Remove the jalebis from the pan and straight add the jalebis into the hot sugar syrup. If the sugar syrup is not hot enough, make the syrup little hot and then turn off the heat before adding the jalebis to it.
- Soak the jalebis into the sugar syrup for at least 2 hours.
- And then serve this Chanar jeelabis or chanar jilipi with little-chopped pistachios.
Tips
- Without soft khoya or mawa, won’t be able to prepare shops like soft jalebis or jeelabis. So don’t skip this part.
- If the khoya is little hard, then add 1 1/2 tsp milk to 3tbsp khoa and microwave it for 10-15 secs, mix it well. Or you can add 1 1/2 tsp hot milk in 3 tbsp khoya and keep it aside for 2 mins. After 2 mins nicely mix the khoa with the milk to make it lump free. Now your soft khoya is ready to use.
- If you are using fresh soft khoa then don’t need to add milk to it. If the khoa was in the refrigerator, might be a little hard and should apply the milk to make it soft. You can apply the milk for store-bought khoya, but then need to check its softness first.
- Perfect kneading of Chenna and the dough of Chenna jalebi is the most important part. We have to perfectly knead both and make it lump free.
- Don’t add the jalebis in hot oil, it’s actually a rule of any fried sweets. So when oil starts to get heated up then add the sweets to it for frying.
- The jalebis should sink into the oil-ghee mix while adding it to the pan for frying. Otherwise crack may appear on its surface.
- Don’t make the sugar syrup too thick, that might make a little hard chanar jeelipi or paneer jalebi.
