Fauzia’s Kitchen Fun

Gulab Jamuns

Fauzia's Kitchen Fun

Servings : Makes approx 20-24

Gulab Jamuns are soft, sweet and utterly addictive. There are a few tips that are necessary to bear in mind BEFORE making them in order to achieve PERFECT results.

Ingredients for Sheera/Syrup

  • 2 cups sugar
  • 2 cups water
  • tiny pinch of orange colour or some strands of saffron
  • 1/4 tsp. powdered cardamon

Ingredients for Gulab Jamuns

  • 1 cup NIDO or any good quality powdered milk (or 2 palm-sized mawas approximately)
  • 1 egg, lightly beaten
  • 1 tsp. semolina/sooji
  • 2 tbsp. plain all purpose flour
  • 1 tsp. baking powder
  • oil as needed

Instructions

How to achieve perfect Gulab Jamuns:

1. Make sure you are using a good quality FULL-FAT milk powder. I prefer using Nido. Lesser qualities or low-fat powders may result in gulab jamuns which have a hard center.

2. If the dough doesn’t come together easily, do not add any oil. You can add a bit of extra egg OR a few drops of milk until the dough is soft and comes together well.

3. Once the dough is prepared and the balls shaped, fry them on LOW heat. This ensures they are fully cooked all the way through. Frying them on high heat will result in hard centers as the jamuns will not get fully cooked.

4. Make sure the sheera/syrup that you will be adding the fried jamuns into is at ROOM TEMPERATURE or just WARM. It should not be boiling hot when you add the hot fried gulab jamuns. Adding hot jamuns to very hot syrup will tighten and shrink them and they will lose the lovely texture and shape.

That’s it! Once you have these important points down, you will achieve the most perfect gulab jamuns.
 

For the Syrup/Sheera

Heat all the ingredients together until the sugar dissolves, then give it a boil on low heat for about 3-5 minutes so it thickens slightly. Let it cool. This will make a bit extra sheera, you can store any excess in the fridge for your next batch of gulab jamuns. It keeps well.

For the Gulab Jamuns

Combine the milk powder, baking powder, semolina and flour together.

Add in the egg, then mix it gently to make a soft dough. Now make small balls out of the dough. This should make about 16 balls. If the dough feels sticky, touch a bit of oil with your fingertips and then form the balls. If the dough is too hard, add a few drops of milk and knead it in until you can form smooth balls. Make sure you fry the balls immediately so that they don’t dry out.

Heat oil on medium, add the gulab jamuns one at a time. Carefully, splash some of the oil over them gently. Lower the heat, if the oil is too hot they will burn from the outside and stay raw on the inside. So keep the oil really low whilst they fry, gently stirring the oil AROUND them so they turn around and get evenly colored. When they have doubled in size and are evenly browned all over, remove with a slotted spoon and put them directly into the sheera/syrup. Remember, the sheera should not be boiling hot, it should be kept on very low heat so that it’s JUST slightly warm. They will expand a bit more as they soak up the syrup.

If you want the fried gulab jamuns softer, boil them in the sheera on very low heat for about 5 minutes whilst covered (put on dum). Then switch off and serve.

Garnish with chopped nuts and serve warm! 🙂

251 thoughts on “Gulab Jamuns”
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251 Replies

  • salam dear sister 🙂 i tried
    salam dear sister 🙂 i tried ur jamuns last week they were amazing but as u said addd food color or safron in sheera i added food color zafrani color to sheera just a pinch…..but when i put my fried balls in sheera aftr soaking up sheera their inner side color turned into black jamun was black from inside due to food color….every one was asking y it tuurns into black color and i was like i dont know may be due to food color 🙁

  • Hey Fozia i tried your recipe
    Hey Fozia i tried your recipe today but there is one problem gulab jamuns were hard and they didn’t soak sheere means they were dry from the inside but why?

  • Salam Fauzia. Just a qs about
    Salam Fauzia. Just a qs about the measurements. I referred to your measurement guide and it says 1 tsp is 5gm and 1 tblsp is 15gm. However, in one of the earlier questions that someone had asked you said 1 tsp can be 5 ml and 1 tblsp is 15 mL. Does it matter if the measuring spoon is in mL or gm for the dry ingredients like flour, suji, baking etc? Sorry I was a little confused so thought I’ll ask. Thank you in advance for your time

    • W/Salaam, for most
      W/Salaam, for most ingredients it doesn’t matter, but there are some ingredients that are lighter or heavier than others. So this is normally a rough estimation for a tsp or tbsp. It is always more accurate to actually weigh the ingredient OR use spoonds/cups that are correct for either dry or liquid ingredients.

  • Assalamualaikum sister.am
    Assalamualaikum sister.am happy and delighted to see your recipies..I have tried most of your dishes and they have turned successful. Alhamdulillah.
    Today I tried these jamuns.everything was fine.but after getting soaked in sheera.,they have shrunken.. They don’t have their regular shape

  • assalamu alaikum mrs.fauzia.I
    assalamu alaikum mrs.fauzia.I tried your gulab jamun recipe but the dough turned out to be hard……also i felt difficult to make perfect balls………. can yo please let me know my mistake in making the dough????????

  • I have tried the gulaab
    I have tried the gulaab jamuns,they were very yummy but they were too much soft from inside….sheera was at room temperature and i fried them on low heat till they came out golden and put them on dum for 3 to 5 minutes in sheera on very low heat….Could you please tell me what’s wrong with them?

  • Salam Fauzia! I have not
    Salam Fauzia! I have not tried your recipe yet but I have tried other recipes for gulab jamun and whenever I make them at home, the balls fall apart in the hot oil when I put them in. Any idea why they fall apart? My second question is that someone told me to use ready made pancake mix instead of flour for soft gulab jamun. Have you tried that?

    • W/Salaam, it could be that
      W/Salaam, it could be that you are using more baking powder than is needed or your baking powder is very potent. Try reducing the amount slightly. Do you knead the jamun dough well enough? As for the pancake mix trick, sorry but I have personally never tried that.

  • Salaamun alayki Sister Fauzia
    Salaamun alayki Sister Fauzia, i tried this today for the first time, it turnedout great, they were soft and yummy!!
    You have done a great job by sharing your wonderful recipes with us, may Allah bless you
    Fi amanillah!

  • As salamu alaykum. Thank you
    As salamu alaykum. Thank you for the detailed recipe, turned good Alhamdulillah for first attempt. I would like to ask one 2 questions and give suggestions. Hope will get a reply.

    Questions:
    1) I made 16 gulab jamun from the dough as specified, which turned out not more than an inch in size, is it normal? Yours also size small?

    2) After every ingredient was collected into a dough, it ended up only a handful in size (almost around regular shop bought gulab jamun sized)from which I made 16 balls, is it normal? I measured every ingredient as per your measurements; for example, milk powder was exactly 120 grams and so on.

    Suggestions:

    1) I ended up using only 1-1/2 tbsp or even less of lightly beaten egg. Since it was my first time making gulab jamuns, originally I was going to pour all of the egg mixture into the mix, but luckily I have also read the comments section in this recipe, where you have instructed not to pour all at once. So I would like to suggest if you can specify in Main instruction, not to use all the egg mixture at once for the said reason? because not everyone get to read comments section.

    2) Please also mention 120 grams or 8tbsp along, where you mentioned Milk Powder in ingredients of the recipe.

    Thank you

    • W/Salaam, thank you. The
      W/Salaam, thank you. The gulab jamuns usually turn out quite a bit bigger than an inch, so am a little surprised that yours were that small. Could be that the baking powder used was not very fresh/strong OR the quantity of egg was very little. Did you use Nido milk powder? Some absorbency of different milk powders can vary, maybe that is the reason why yours needed so little of the egg mixture. But as long as they turned out well for you, you can make less than 16 of them so as to have them a slightly bigger size. 🙂

  • Thank you for the great
    Thank you for the great recipe Fauzia :)! I tried them yest and they came out well alhamdulillah. But while frying they didn’t expand much. You mentioned they should double in size but that didn’t happen with mine. So I followed your tip and boiled them on low heat and that’s when they expanded. What could be the reason for this ? I followed the recipe exactly and my baking was also fresh.

  • Sorry just wanted to confirm
    Sorry just wanted to confirm so I don’t do the same mistake next time . By size of the egg, did you mean that the egg I used was too big or too small ?

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