Traditional Feast: Preparing and Enjoying Jalebi (Funnel Cake)

Hello everyone! I hope you all will be well and good. Today I am going to share a traditional good of my area which is known as Jalebi. This is a sweet dish and people eat it deliciously. It is the part of culture and tradition. It is widely distributed in special events. We distribute it as charity to please God.

So my uncle decided to arrange this sir ial feast for everyone. He decided to give Jalebi as food in the feast. I think the word jalebi can be confusing for you so in English it is known as funnel cake. Actually the name is from it's shape. This food consists of funnel type tubes and when it is cooked it is hollow from inside. And after that it is dipped in the sugar syrup. At that time it becomes sweet.

Preparations for the jalebi feast started. My uncle planned this feast suddenly otherwise it was on the next week. We bought dry woods for the fire. All the woods were gathered at one place in the house. We placed it in appropriate place so that we could use them easily. These were costly because of their dryness.

The recipe of funnel cake mainly consists of sugar and plain flour. Plain flour is all purpose flour and it is a refined wheat flour. We brought two sacks of sugar and plain flour each. My father and all my uncles are the master of cooking funnel cakes and they know how to cook it in different ways. There is the need of proper method to cook it otherwise no one will like. The recipe of the funnel cake also matters.

In order to make the sugar syrup we needed big container. We call this big container as daig in our area. We made temporary stoves with the help of the bricks. So the big container was filled with the water and it was placed on the stove with continuous fire. We put one sack of sugar in the container and the fire was going on continuously. The sugar melting and the sugar syrup was becoming thicker and thicker in which the hollow funnel cakes will be dipped.

On the other hand the preparation of the plain flour was also going on. My uncle was preparing it carefully so that it could not become too much thick or thin to handle in cooking. Moreover this thing is also kept in mind that the output funnel cakes should be soft not hard, they should be little crunchy so that everyone can eat them easily. The red colour is because of the sunlight. It is the colour of the canvas reflection which was of red colour.

We use ghee or oil to fry the funnel cakes. Do we brought a big bucket of ghee. It was put in the flat containers with small corners all around. The red canvas reflection is also here but for your understanding it is ghee for the frying purpose.

The sugar syrup was finally ready. And it was poured to another container in which we could easily dip the hollow funnel cakes. It was a container with wide opening and we could easily handle dipping the funnel cakes in it.

The setup was complete. Everything was ready. The fire, the sugar syrup and the plain flour dough all was ready to cook funnel cake. And more preparations were still going on to enhance the working and expedite the work.

Moving next now the sugar syrup was ready. The dough of plain flour was also ready. Now my uncles started filling the special types of clothes with plain flour dough. The plain flour dough was added into the hot ghee in a unique style for the frying purpose. You can see the way and style of the funnel cakes how if goes for frying purpose. It needs practice and everyone cannot do it. The noobs can hurt themselves with the hot frying oil.

After frying the funnel cakes in the hot oil untill they become light brown they are dipped in the sugar syrup. My cousin was dipping it carefully because the syrup as well as the funnel cakes both were hot. He had a long dipper to avoid splashed on hands. It is dipped for a while untill it gets filled with the sugar syrup completely.

Finally the funnel cakes are ready to eat 😋. It is the final look of the funnel cakes. These were looking very delicious and yummy. My mouth was watering but I could not eat them because they were very hot.

After some times when we cooked enough funnel cakes the feast began. First of all we started serving the little children with the funnel cakes. They enjoyed it to their fill. Afterward everyone was served with funnel cakes which was coming fit the feast. It was an open feast for everyone.

I was busy in serving others but at the end I also enjoyed it. The interesting thing is that this feast was carried out until night.

Disclaimer: All the pictures are mine taken with my mobile Redmi Note 10.