Brown rice laddu
Preparation Time
23 minutes
Cooking Time
13 minutes
Difficulty Level
easy
Meal Type
Dessert
Serves 16
Key Ingredients
- Brown basmati rice
About This Recipe
The Kerala brown rice laddu, called ari unda at home, starts with rice, not flour: the grain is dry-roasted in a kadai until it smells nutty, then ground to a fine powder and bound with warm jaggery syrup and ghee. Roasting the grain whole keeps the bran in the flour, which is the whole point of choosing brown rice for a sweet.
This recipe roasts one cup of whole brown rice, then binds the flour with 150 g of jaggery and 3 tablespoons of ghee. The syrup does all the holding, so no milk, coconut or nuts are needed, and the laddus are soft on the first day and firmer after. Each laddu weighs about 25 g.
If the dough turns dry, warm a spoon of ghee and knead it in; if it feels sticky, add a spoon of the roasted flour. What the whole grain holds is in our guide to brown rice, and the brown rice recipes roundup has savoury ways with it, from khichdi to upma.
Ingredient List
Serving Size:
1x
2x
3x
Roast and grind
- Brown basmati rice — 1 cup
Bind
- Jaggery powder — 150 g
- Ghee (most for the syrup, a little for the palms) — 3 tbsp
- Water — 1/4 cup
- Green cardamom powder — 1/2 tsp
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Serving Suggestions
Set a laddu on the plate after a meal, or serve two with a glass of milk as an evening sweet. They pack well, so tuck one into a lunchbox or take a few on a journey. Store them in an airtight jar; they keep for about a week at room temperature. For the savoury side of the grain, the brown rice khichdi covers dinner and the upma breakfast.
Tips for Cooking Brown rice laddu
Roast the rice on a low flame and keep it moving; the grains should turn crisp and a shade deeper, never scorched, and they must cool fully before grinding or the jar fogs and the flour clumps. Cook the jaggery only until it turns slightly sticky; boil it longer and the laddus set hard. Roll while the dough is warm; once it cools, the dough cracks instead of shaping.
Chef’s Note
The binding is the syrup, not the ghee: simmered jaggery pulled into the warm flour holds each laddu in a soft ball. One laddu comes to about 103 kcal with 1.3 g protein and 0.6 g fibre, nearly all of the fibre from the rice; the jaggery and ghee bring most of the energy.
Per serving (approx.): 103 kcal, protein 1.3 g, carbs 17 g, fat 3 g, fibre 0.6 g. Computed from IFCT 2017 / USDA values for the listed quantities. Measures: 1 cup = 240 ml, 1 tbsp = 15 ml, 1 tsp = 5 ml.
Happy Cooking
!!
ByCOWBERRY
Jun 13, 2026
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