Carrot Kheer Recipe, Carrot Payasam

Carrot kheer or Gajar ki kheer is a healthy and delectable sweet pudding made up of sweet organic carrots, milk and jaggery. This carrot kheer tastes as delicious as it looks. It is very popular in South India and referred as Carrot payasam.

I was looking to prepare some good recipes for my 1 year old son and found this to be a perfect recipe for toddlers. My son enjoyed it a lot, I am really glad. Also If you are making it for toddler, skip using nuts in this recipe as it can choke them. Instead use almond powder or cashew powder. It will enhance the flavour also.

This carrot kheer is also good for health conscious people who counts calories. In this recipe, I have used jaggery but if you wish you can replace it with sugar or any sweetener and I have not used any butter or ghee in this carrot recipe. You can make it a diabetic friendly recipe by skipping sugar or sweetener completely, the recipe would still turn out very lightly sweet.

During many Indian Hindu festivals Hindus keep fast (Vrat) and eat only some special diet. This is a very good recipe for these fasting (Vrat) occasions.

Let's come to the recipe.

Ingredients

*measurement for cup used, 1 cup = 250 ml

1 cup grated tender carrots (I used organic carrot)
½ cup water
1 ½ cup full fat milk
2 teaspoon milk powder
2 teaspoon almond powder
Few strands of saffron (optional)
3 green cardamoms, crushed or ½ teaspoon cardamom powder
½ cup jaggery or (as required)
Few pistachio or cashews as needed(optional)

Step by step carrot kheer

Step 1. Wash carrots, trim both ends and peel of the skin. Grate it using a grater and then measure 1 cup tightly packed carrots.

Step 2. Place a pressure cooker on medium heat. Add carrots and half a cup water. Close the lid and cook the carrot until 2 whistles comes. Turn off the gas.
Pressure cooker helps in reducing the cooking time. If you don't have pressure cooker then don't worry, you can cook the carrots in any suitable pot, it may just take little longer to cook.

Step 3. Once carrots are cooked properly (remove the pressure cooker lid if using pressure cooker), again turn on the heat. Add jaggery, freshly pounded cardamom pods. Cook on medium heat by stirring it to combine jaggery.

Step 4. Once jaggery is melted completely, add full fat milk, milk powder, almond powder and saffron threads. (I saved few saffron threads for garnishing). Now turn the heat from medium to low and cook further. It may take at least 7-10mins so keep sautéing on low flame.

Step 5. Cool down for a while and blend it roughly with a hand blender. Carrot kheer is ready to serve. Garnish with chopped pistachio and saffron.