What is Sunnundalu?

Sunnundalu are round, dense, faintly grainy laddus made from whole urad dal that has been dry-roasted until it smells nutty and gone the color of weak tea, then ground fine and worked together with powdered jaggery and warm ghee. There is no flour, no milk and no cooking after the roast — the ball holds because the ghee binds the dal powder as it cools, which is why they must be pressed while the mixture is still warm enough to hurt slightly. They are not soft. A good sunnundalu is firm, crumbles at the edge when you bite it, and coats your mouth with ghee and toasted lentil in a way no other Indian sweet quite does. The jaggery is the variable most families argue about: too little and it tastes like health food, too much and it turns claggy. Some households swap jaggery for plain sugar, which produces a paler, sweeter, less interesting ball and is quietly judged.

The roast is the entire dish. Urad dal is dry-roasted on low heat, stirred constantly, and pulled off the moment the color turns and the smell shifts from raw to nutty — a minute past that and a bitterness sets in that no amount of jaggery will hide. The dal is cooled, ground, and sieved; the coarse remainder is either re-ground or, in most kitchens, eaten by whoever is standing nearby. Then jaggery is powdered in with a little cardamom, hot ghee is drizzled in stages, and the mixture is pressed hard into balls in the curl of the palm. Amount of ghee is judged entirely by feel — the mixture should just hold when squeezed, and the first ball is always a test that gets crumbled back into the bowl.