Gooseberry is wonderful as a pickle. This is very easy to prepare in short time and uses minimum oil. I add only fresh spices to have nice aroma and taste of the pickle.
Gooseberry is known as Nellikkai in Tamil and as Amla in Hindi.
Ingredients
- Nellikkai – 10 to 12 no
- Red chilli – 8 to 10 no
- Turmeric – 1 small piece
- Asafetida – peas size
- Cumin seed – ½ tea spoon
- Fenugreek seed – ½ tea spoon
- Mustard – ¼ tea spoon
- Salt – as per taste
- For seasoning
- Mustard – 1 tea spoon
- Curry leaves – few
- Sesame oil – 1 table spoon
Method
- Boil 3 to 4 cups of water; when it is boiling, add ½ tea spoon turmeric powder, 1 tea spoon salt and washed gooseberry; switch off gas, close the vessel and keep it for few hours.
- Now remove the seeds from gooseberry; seed will come out easily if you keep gooseberry’s top and bottom between your fingertips and press lightly.
- Break turmeric and asafetida into small pieces and dry roast asafetida pieces in a dry pan till crisp; in the same pan roast mustard, cumin, fenugreek, turmeric pieces; remove and keep.
- Fry red chilli with little salt till crisp; cool this and grind all dry roasted items to a coarse powder with salt.
- Mix this powder with the gooseberry pieces well.
- Now heat oil in a pan; when it is smoking hot, add mustard, curry leaves; remove from fire and allow it to cool; add in the spiced gooseberry pieces; mix well, keep for 2 hours and then use.
- Tasty Nellikkai Urugai (Gooseberry Pickle) is ready.
Tips
- As we use very less oil, it is better to keep in fridge after one or two days.
- Seeds of gooseberry can be removed after steam cooking also.
- Adding little salt with red chilli helps to roast chilli quickly and you won’t get nose and throat irritation while roasting.
Did you find this article useful? Please subscribe to our RSS Feed to receive all the FREE updates on various articles!
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }