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Loading...Surti ghari is a sweet dish from the diamond city of Gujarat called Surat. Ah..my home town! Okay, let me tell you how excited (nervous, too) I am now while sharing this recipe with you. Before I go into the heavenly details of a typical surti-style sweet dish, let’s understand ghari first.
Table of Contents
What is ghari?
Ghari is a sweet dish like peda, Kaju katli, ladoo, ghevar etc. Ghee & dry fruits are star ingredients here, and the making process involves four significant steps. Making this surti sweet dish might not go well with beginners. Because giving it the traditional shape and then frying it in ghee might make you nervous.
I have seen how non-Gujaratis make surti ghari and what mistakes they make or have made. Non-gujjus making ghari even includes seasoned chefs across India. But that’s okay if there are a few hiccups in their ghari recipes. Here we will encounter all possible issues from start to finish to make a perfect surti-style ghari.
Why it’s called surti ghari?
Apart from what I said above, a few exciting details make ghari standalone from regular sweets found at a halwai shop. First thing first, ghari is a prominent sweet that originated in the city of Surat, Gujarat. This sweet dish is so tempting that the Surat city people made a particular festival, The Chandi Padvo, out of it.
I mean a whole day dedicated to eating just a sweet. Can you believe it?😳 That’s simply amazing. It sounds like Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany, where people drink beverages the whole month. Now I think that the world is a crazy place. BTW people of surat city are famous worldwide with nicknames like Surti Lala, aka Lehri Lala.
Wait, there’s something more. You can’t just buy surti ghari in surat, take home saying – hey, let’s eat ghari! Nope. That’s not how a typical surti eats ghari.
Along with ghari, you will need to buy farsan, aka namkeen and sutarfeni. It’s an add-on to the main sweet. Sutarfeni is like cotton candy made from rice flour roasted in ghee and blended with melted sugar.
This is how you buy ghari. After buying ghari, you must take your family out on the streets, sit there and eat under the moonlight. Due to this reason, it is called The Chandi Padvo festival.
Varieties of Surti Ghari
Like I said above, ghee and dry fruits are significant ingredients to make plain ghari. However, there are two levels of varieties available in this sweet dish. The below list has the first level of the type usually found at sweet shops in Surat.
- Badam Pista ghari
- Dry fruit ghari
- Kesar badam pista ghari
- Mawa ghari
The second level of variety is not found at local sweet shops. These are the highly custom avatars of traditional ghari. For example, white chocolate ghari and dark chocolate ghari. If you are lucky, you may get to eat chocolate mawa ghari too.
These varieties are complex. Someone with an expert hand in cooking can only make it correctly. Okay, now let me pull back myself or I will keep talking about it.
Interesting facts about surti ghari
- Surti people eat 100+ tons of ghari annually on the day of Chandi Padva.
- Tatya Tope shared the recipe of Ghari in the 18th century to feed the tired British army from a long journey.
- Traditional surti ghari is a mixture of sugar, ghee, dry fruits, and milk mava filled in maida puri.
- Ghari is in high demand among Gujaratis settled abroad too.
- Dumas and Ubharat beaches in Surat city are popular destinations among surtis to celebrate this festival.
- In 2020, a sweet shop in Surat city, 24 Carat, made Gold ghari by coating it with gold leaves. The price was Rs.9000/kg.
That was it with teaching you how to make authentic surti ghari. Let me know in the comments how you made this recipe. Follow my video for step-by-step details.
