Badusha/Balushahi

Badusha or Balushahi as it is called in north India is a delectable Indian traditional sweet, made during festivals and special occasions. Though not yeasted it is partly similar to the donut, as it is also deep fried and contains all-purpose flour, as the main ingredient.

In our house badusha is the most sought-after sweet, being both hubby and kids favorite. Whenever I make it, my elder son would take the whole container and keep it in his room.

And literally, I would keep begging him for the rest of us 😀  . Then he will insist that I make a separate batch for him. It’s never enough in our house.

During my last visit to India, we had a small get-together with school friends. It was a kind of potluck meet, and for my part, I made this sweet.

It was liked and enjoyed by all my friends and they all wanted the recipe. So this is for all of them, and for the rest of my friends who could not get to taste it.

Coming to the recipe, it is pretty straightforward and simple. The major investment will be your time and patience. The dough balls have to be fried in the lowest flame setting.

You may have to even remove it off the stove if it starts bubbling up at that temperature. One batch will take anywhere between 10 to 15 minutes to fry depending on the size of your roundels.

So what I would suggest is, that you should prepare this in the midst of your other kitchen chores, in a way that you can keep an eye on it. If you plan to spend dedicated time for this alone, you will definitely become tired of waiting  🙂  .

Apart from the slow cooking,  two other factors that you need to keep in mind are the way the dough is mixed. One is rubbing and the other is patting.

After adding the ghee, rub the flour by taking it in both your hands, till it gets a nice bread crumb texture. To incorporate the curd/yogurt into the flour, collect and pat the dough over, till no dry flour remains.

Do not be tempted to knead or smooth out the dough. It has to be rough or rather barely mixed. If you try to knead it to a smooth dough, then the layers will not be formed.

This is my way of making the badusha, and believe me, it has always worked. For years, I have got rave reviews from whoever had it, so much so that my family calls it my signature dish 🙂  .

Do it the way I am doing, and you will keep looking for reasons to make this traditional Indian sweet.

For Non-Indians who are familiar with the donut, this will be a welcome change. Though like the donut this is not a very healthy recipe, as it involves deep frying and dunking in sugar syrup, it’s definitely a treat. But it’s a lot better than the ones we used to get when I was a kid as it was made with hydrogenated vegetable oil.

I have tried to make it with wholewheat flour too. It did come out very well, light and flaky following my method. But I could smell a mild wheat flavor, though my family did not sense the difference.

Nonetheless, whenever I make badusha for the family it’s mostly with whole wheat. You can also try subbing half the all-purpose flour with whole wheat. Still, am looking for avenues to make this sweet even healthier. Will keep you guys posted.

Alternately, you can try with organic white flour too, like the Dove’s farm plain white flour which I use every now and then. For people in Qatar, it is available at Lulu and Megamart.

When you are trying for the first time you can half the recipe, depending on your confidence level. Though you will never go wrong with this recipe. The standard recipe is for 1½ cups of flour, which will yield around 18 pieces of badusha. I have actually doubled the recipe, as this was for our get-together.

Over to the recipe..

Hema’s P.S

• Ensure that the curd/yogurt you add is cold and not sour. If you use sour curd, then the badhusha will also turn sour. But when I made these I only had curd that was sour. So I added milk as much as needed, to nullify the sour taste, refrigerated it for some time till it became cold, and then proceeded with the recipe. (That’s some trouble shooting tips 🙂  )
• Honestly, I knew there was curd in the refrigerator, but did not bother to check how sour it was. I came to the bread crumb stage of the recipe, and then only sensed that I obviously could not use such a sour curd. Urgently sent out hubby to somehow get curd from the stores, but my bad nowhere it was available. So made my own by adding milk to the sour curd. All this took more than 3 hours, and till that time the flour was waiting in the bread crumb stage 🙂  . Though it did not impact the recipe, was a great learning lesson for me, that I have to check the ingredients before proceeding to make any recipe.
• Adding lemon juice to the sugar syrup prevents crystallization.
• You can dunk the badushas, in the syrup for as much as you want. I normally soak it for 5 minutes, and the sweetness is perfect.
• Ensure that the syrup is at least warm when the fried badushas are dunked into it. If it comes to room temperature, you can heat it up on low flame.
• When you plan to dunk the badushas straight away into the sugar syrup,  see that you soak it for no more than 5 minutes. Else it can become too soft and break. 
• Use the leftover sugar syrup to prepare some other delicacy.

 

 

 

 

 

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