Deepavali Dumplings: Susiyam, Munthiri kothu & Bonda

Deepavali Recipes, Indian savoury snacks, Indian Sweets, Tirunelveli Recipes

Dumplings are not only traditional but also universal, they are ubiquitous in almost every cultural cuisine in various forms be it boiled, baked, steamed or fried. Chinese dim sum, Italian ravioli, Nepalese yomari, Jamaican fried dumplings, Polish potato plum dumplings, British herb dumplings, American apple dumplings, etc. are some of the old-fashioned adorable dumplings that still delight the gourmets across the globe. Susiyam, Munthiri kothu & Bonda are the traditional dumplings prepared in my family for Deepavali festival.

dumplngcollage Deepavali Dumplings: Susiyam, Munthiri kothu & Bonda
Traditional dumplings in different cuisines

Indian cuisine also boasts a wide range of traditional dumplings of different shapes, flavors and textures. We celebrate almost every festival with delicious dumplings stuffed with sweet or savory fillings.

indiandumplings Deepavali Dumplings: Susiyam, Munthiri kothu & Bonda
Indian dumplings

Deepavali Dumplings

Munthiri kothu, susiyam, and bonda are the typical south Indian dumplings prepared specially for the festival of Deepavali. You may check out my other Deepavali recipes here.

dumplngs Deepavali Dumplings: Susiyam, Munthiri kothu & Bonda
South Indian Deepavali dumplings

Susiyam (Sweet Dumpling)

Susiyam is a delicious dumpling with sweet filling and spongy covering, and the filling is made of cooked lentils, coconut and a sweetener usually jaggery. The recipe for susiyam is as below:

susiyam Deepavali Dumplings: Susiyam, Munthiri kothu & Bonda
Susiyam

Yields:  12 dumplings

Ingredients:

Fillings:

  • Bengal gram (chickpeas/ kadalai paruppu) – ½ cup
  • Powdered jaggery – ½ cup
  • Coconut meat as desired
  • Green cardamom – 1
  • Ghee – ½ tsp

Batter:

  • Idli rice – ¼ cup
  • Whole blackgram (ulundham paruppu)* – ¼ cup
  • Salt – ¼ tsp

* You may adjust the quantity of dal to suit your palate, reduced dal leads to hard skin, and increased dal adds an unpleasant dal flavor.

susiyam-ingr Deepavali Dumplings: Susiyam, Munthiri kothu & Bonda
Susiyam ingredients

How to prepare susiyam:

  • Wash and soak rice & black gram for 2 hours.
  • Wash & soak Bengal gram separately for 1 hour.
  • Pressure cook the soaked Bengal gram by adding ¼ cup of water.
  • Simmer for 5 min. after reaching the high pressure.
  • Grind chopped coconut meat & cardamom without adding water.
  • Add cooked lentil into the mixer and grind into a fine powder.
  • Heat the same pressure cooker in low flame after adding the lentil mixture.
  • Add powdered jaggery and mix well to blend together.
  • Remove from flame.
  • Add a tsp of ghee and roll into small balls.
  • Now grind the soaked rice, black gram & salt into a smooth batter after adding enough water.
  • Transfer the batter to a bowl.
  • Dip the balls into batter and drop them one by one into hot oil using a fork.#
  • Fry them until sizzling sound ceased.
  • Remove from oil and place them onto a kitchen paper to drain excessive oil.

#To form dent-free dumplings we can use fork to coat dumplings with batter.

suseeyam Deepavali Dumplings: Susiyam, Munthiri kothu & Bonda
Susiyam recipe

Munthiri Kothu (Sweet Dumpling)

Munthiri kothu is popular in Tirunelveli, Nagerkoil, and Kanyakumari regions. It is almost similar to susiyam but has hard filling wrapped by thin crispy skin. The recipe for munthiri kothu is as below:

munthrikothu Deepavali Dumplings: Susiyam, Munthiri kothu & Bonda
Munthiri Kothu

Yields: 22 dumplings

Ingredients:

Fillings:

  • Toasted green gram (varuththa paasi payaru) – 1 cup
  • Desiccated coconut* – ½ cup
  • Toasted sesame seeds (varuththa ellu) – 1/8 cup
  • Green cardamoms – 2
  • Jaggery powder – 2 cups

*I used desiccated coconut in place of fresh coconut, as there is no need to stir-fry them before using.

Batter:

  • Rice flour* – 1 cup
  • All purpose flour (maida) – ¼
  • Turmeric powder – ¼ tsp
  • Salt – ¼ tsp

*Generally maida is used for batter, but I used maida as a binding agent only, liberal use of maida leads to crinkled skin that I don’t like to see on my dumplings.

munthrikothu-ingr Deepavali Dumplings: Susiyam, Munthiri kothu & Bonda
Munthiri kothu ingredients

How to prepare munthiri kothu:

  • Grind toasted lentils, sesame seeds, desiccated coconut & cardamom into a slightly coarse powder.
  • Heat a sauce pan with 2 cups of jaggery & ¼ cup of water in medium flame.
  • Bring it to boil until 110ºC and remove from flame.
  • Pour the syrup into the flour gradually and mix well.
  • Roll into small balls and refrigerate them for 2 hours allowing to dry quickly.
  • Prepare the batter by mixing all the ingredients for batter with water in a bowl.#
  • You can fry munthiri kothu as shown below.

#The quantity of water used in this batter decides the thickness of skin, here I accidentally used water little more than required, and hence the covering became too thin and the filling slightly discharged into oil, but

munthri-kothu Deepavali Dumplings: Susiyam, Munthiri kothu & Bonda
Munthiri Kothu preparation

Bonda (Savory Dumpling)

Bonda is a savory dumpling with spicy potato filling usually served with coconut chutney. The recipe for potato bonda is as below:

bonda1 Deepavali Dumplings: Susiyam, Munthiri kothu & Bonda
Urulai Kizhangu Bonda

Yields: 10 dumplings

Ingredients:

Fillings:

  • Boiled potatoes – 2
  • A handful of boiled peas
  • Onion (finely chopped) – 1
  • A sprig of curry leaves (roughly chopped)
  • Red chilli powder – ½ tsp
  • Salt – ½ tsp

Batter:

  • Gram flour – ½ cup
  • Red chilli powder – ½ tsp
  • Salt – ½ tsp
  • Turmeric powder – ¼ tsp
  • Asafoetida powder – ¼ tsp
  • Water – ¼ cup
bonda-ingr Deepavali Dumplings: Susiyam, Munthiri kothu & Bonda
Bonda ingredients

How to make potato bonda:

We prepare the fillings by sautéing all the ingredients and the batter by mixing all the batter ingredients. Then we roll the filling into small balls, dip them in the batter and fry them in hot oil. You can refer the gif below which is self explanatory for making aloo bonda.

bonda Deepavali Dumplings: Susiyam, Munthiri kothu & Bonda
Aloo Bonda Preparation

100 comments on “Deepavali Dumplings: Susiyam, Munthiri kothu & Bonda”Add yours →

Comments are closed. You can not add new comments.

  8. Sugiyan (as we call it) is a personal favorite. My friend who lived in our building ensured this treat in her Diwali snack pack every year. She even told me a short cut of using idli batter to dip the jaggery mix in. Of course, it was her short cut.
    Now that you have given me the bonda recipe, I will try this as my evening snack today. Seems easy too! Thank you, Megala.

  12. I love traditional recipes such as this one! Never knew something like this existed – thank you for sharing this and enlightening people like me. 🙂 This looks delicious, btw!

    1. Oh, really? I’m so glad that I have introduced these to you, hope you would like to try them sometime soon. Thank you.

  13. You are so right. Dumplings are universal. I make an old Pennsylvania Dutch dish called Pot-pie. The potpies are really doughy and much like dumplings.

    1. Oh, nice! Now I feel dumplings are invariably delicious too. 🙂 Thank you so much for stopping by!

  14. Pingback: iScribir Turns One–Reblogged | By the Mighty Mumford
  15. Pingback: iScriblr Turns One! - iScriblr

  16. So many different shapes and sizes of dumplings . I do love the Indian ones the best. They ahbe made me super hungry for them and it’s only breakfast…

  20. Divine dumplings! Although I just posted about gyoza and frequently make all kinds of dumplings, I’ve never had any quite like this before. I must add them to my “to cook” list!

    1. Thank you so much! Those gyoza were so cute & gorgeous, traditional Indian dumplings are quite unique that we stuff them with lentil mixture apart from vegetable mixture.

    1. Oh, but we could very well relate ravioli with the dumplings here. 🙂
      Thanks Tracey!

  30. What a wonderful job, you had worked so hard behind the post. Thank you so much for sharing at the right time. One kind request is , can you post recipe for doing murukku in simple method only if you are interested.

    1. Thanks a ton for your kind appreciation. I feel I’m not an expert in making bakshanam, and I have seen many women doing this job with great finesse. So I was not confident of posting such recipes here, but your kind words encourage me to post a recipe for murukku. You may expect this before Diwali specially for you. 🙂

  33. wow what a delicious mouthwatering spread of dumplings! This post is sure setting the festive mood 🙂 Wonderful share Megala!

    1. Thanks Nisha, I just tried to bring out the festive mood in here.
      Happy Diwali to you & your family!

  34. How wonderful! I love how natural your pictures are. People often use fancy photo filters and I can never figure out what the actual dish looks like. This is a great post. Never made dumplings before. Have to try it! Thank you!

  44. The South Indian dumplings except bonda, which we in Gujarat and Maharashtra call Batata Vada, are new to me and seem delicious. So yummy. I’m going to try making these.

    1. Yes, it has been given various names like suyyam, suzhiyam, etc., but it tastes really delicious. 🙂
      Thank you.

      1. Oh, yes, you can very well treat your family with bonda any time. 🙂 Thanks Kavita!

error: Content is protected !!
%d bloggers like this: