Spiced Coconut Porridge
Updated Apr. 29th, 2024
Enjoy the traditional dessert of Southern India with this payasam, porridge combination. It’s got the delicious, creamy flavours of spices with a healthy dose of coconut for true coconut lovers! The ghee is packed full of vitamins and its high smoke point and taste only adds to the simplicity of the dish. Serve this up after a dinner of curry and all of your guests will be complimenting you left right and centre!
- Gluten Free
- Dairy Free
- Sugar Free
- Vegetarian
Ingredients:
| 2 tablespoon ghee | 3/4 cup young coconut water | flesh from 1 vanilla bean |
| 2 tablespoon cashews, roughly chopped or halved | handful raisins, optional | 1/2 cup rice vermicelli noodles, broken into 1/2 –inch pieces |
| 1 cup young coconut meat, diced | 3 tablespoon demerara | |
| 3/4 cup coconut milk | 5 cardamom pods |
Directions
- Over medium heat, bring your ghee, cashews and only ¾ of your coconut meat to a slight boil. Make sure you are stirring constantly to avoid burning. You are trying to light brown your cashews, which shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.
- Add in all other ingredients except your noodles. Leaving your stove on medium heat, bring all of the contents back to a boil, and then reduce the heat to low and simmer for another ten minutes or so.
- During the half waypoint in your simmering, add in your noodles. You will start to notice your mixture getting thicker. Tip: if it is too thick, add a little more coconut water to the mix.
- Add your remaining coconut meat to your serving bowl, and top with your porridge. Top with dried fruits, nuts, cinnamon or seeds and enjoy warm!
Make It This Way
If you don’t have demerara on hand, you could substitute it out for palm sugar or date sugar.
Try swapping out cashews for your favourite nuts, such as pecans or almonds.
Try This
Try swapping out the rice noodles for oats, and enjoy this as a healthy, filling breakfast!
This spiced coconut porridge looks so creamy and so delicious and such a filling breakfast option! I love how it is spiced and incorporates those spiced flavours with the coconut ti make it extra creamy and delicious. This is a great and such a satisfying option with delicious oatmeal. I also love how this incorporates ghee as it is such a good ingredient option that often gets over looked! The vermicelli noodles are a satisfying addition as well. I love cashews! So good.
Hello O,
This is a great healthy alternative to oatmeal, we're glad you like it and can add it to your list of breakfast options. If you'd like to learn about the health benefits of ghee, check out this article here:
https://www.nationalnutrition.ca/articles/supplements/ghee/
Stay healthy & well.
I never heard of payasam before and I am hoping that I can try some from a local Indian resturant or from somebody in the neighboring lab (in the lab that is next to the lab that I work in, the PI is from India and many of the students in that lab are international students from India as well- they often bring things back from India, including desserts). The rice noodles in this dish sound especially interesting: I have never had something sweet with rice noodles in it before!