Pirandai: Amazing Health Benefits

1. Pirandai Thovayal | Chutney benefits: For Gastritis, Indigestion & more:

                        Pirandai thovayal treats all digestion related problems like gastritis, indigestion and lack of appetite. Pirandai thovayal can be made in matter of minutes and tastes really good. To make the thovayal, take around a cup of cleaned, finely chopped pirandai. Heat around 1.5 tabelspoons of sesame oil in a pan and roast 3 tbsp urad dhal, 3 dry red chillies, a small piece of asafoetida separately till golden and remove from the pan. Now take the cut pirandai pieces in the same pan and fry well till the color of pirandai changes to pale color. Grind the fried spices first to a coarse powder in a blender, now add fried pirandai, 1 tsp of tamarind, salt, a pinch of jaggery and grind to thick coarse paste with very little water. You can season with mustard and curry leaves, if you prefer. This thovayal gives best results if consumed weekly twice, especially if you suffer from indigestion, gastritis or if you are a person who eats out a lot. It is also good home remedy for piles. To eat, mix the thovayal/ chutney with hot rice and little bit of ghee. This pirandai thovayal tastes wonderful, but make sure to fry the pirandai very well till the color changes.

2. Pirandai For Sprains:

                            Pirandai poultice is very good for treating sprains and swollen joints. It is also one home remedy that many people in our village use often for minor injuries, as it heals the minor sprains and fractures very fast. Take pirandai and clean like I mentioned above, now take a cup of pirandai and grind it in a mixer with very little water and extract the juice. Take the juice along with a tbsp of tamarind paste, a tsp of salt, tsp of pure turmeric powder and warm it in a pan. Now test the temperature of the mixture and if it's hot wait for it to come to lukewarm temperature, apply this mixture over sprains, just like we apply sprain creams. Some people grind the pirandai pieces as such without extracting the juice before heating it, you can try both methods.

3. Pirandai Appalams:

                       There is also an easy and delicious way to consume pirandai, without any effort on our part and that is by consuming pappads. Sounds good right? Traditional urad dal appalams were always made with pirandai. I will just give the general instructons for making the appalams: Water is added to stone ground urad dal flour along with pirandai juice, pepper powder, salt and little bit of pickling lime. It is pounded well to make it into a soft pliable dough and then made into appalams. If you can buy traditional appalams made with pirandai juice, it will be very good, you can also order these appalams online. Here in Tamil Nadu, the famous Kallidaikurichi appalams known for it's taste and quality were always made with pirandai juice, which gives it's unique wonderful taste.


4. Pirandai For Children:

                   It is difficult to make young children eat pirandai thovayal, so try giving pirandai in the form of vathal. Regularly including pirandai vathal in their diet will prevent them from getting stomach disorders. Clean the pirandai and cut into small pieces, now take a cup of thick buttermilk and add required amount of salt. Soak the pirandai in the butter milk for 4 to 5 days. On the fifth day, remove from the butter milk and sun dry till crisp and store it in a air tight box. Whenever necessary, fry the vadams in little oil till crisp. These crisps are perfect accompaniments for any rice. Pirandai can also be ground and added to dosa batter to make pirandai dosa.


5. Pirandai for Bleeding Piles & Deworming:

                      This treatment for bleeding piles has to done continuously for at least 7 to 10 days to see results. For the treatment take pirandai and cut into small pieces after cleaning and scrapping. Now take little bit of homemade ghee in a pan and fry the pirandai pieces well, till the color changes. If you don't fry pirandai well, you will have the itchiness in your throat after eating it. After frying it well, grind it to a paste well in a blender, by adding very very little boiled water to a paste. Store this in a bottle in the refrigerator and consume a 1/4 tsp of this paste daily for about 10 days to get relief from anal itching, deworming and for piles. Make sure to fry the pirandai in ghee well, as we need to store the ground paste for almost 10 days. This treatment also gets rid of intestinal worms. 

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01-12-2017