Must try: DIY street-style meetha paan at home in just 5 mins
Paan is a popular street food of India. It is made with betel leaves stuffed with sweet and savoury ingredients.
The assortment of street foods in India leaves us spoilt for choice between numerous spicy snacks or small meals. Among the bevy of savoury street foods, meetha paan stands out as the only sweet street food for post-meal treats. We see paan vendors taking position outside restaurants as that's the one thing almost all Indians like to have after a hearty meal. Paan does the three-fold job of a post-meal dessert, a mouth freshener and a digestive enhancer. The flavourful and fragrant paan rounds off our meal perfectly! But, currently, as we are avoiding stepping out while practicing self-quarantine to evade Coronavirus, we thought of making our favourite meetha paan at home.
Make this sweet paan without tobacco for your family for a perfect after-dinner treat. This paan can be made in just 5 minutes, provided you have all the ingredients ready. You'll need to source in advance some betel leaves and gulkand and mouth freshener mix - all of these are easily available at grocery stores. Gulukand is a sweetened rose preservative that lends sweetness to the paan and also works as a great digestion booster. Mouth freshener mix of fennel seeds, cloves, and other spices, is also available in the market, but if you want to make it at home, follow this mouth freshener/mukhwas recipe.
You will also need coconut, dried fruits like tutti fruity or raisins or finely chopped dates. This meetha paan will have everything you love - minty flavour of paan leaves and mouth fresheners, sweetness of gulkand and dried fruits, and creaminess of coconut.
Easy meetha paan recipe: Ingredients - 4 betel/paan leaves, 2 tbsp desiccated coconut, 2 tbsp mouth freshener mix, 2 tbsp tutti frutti/raisins/chopped dates, 1 tbsp gulkand
Method: Wash and dry the betel leaves. Cut their stems. Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl. Lay down all the betel leaves on a flat surface and place a tbsp. of the paan filling in the centre of each leaf. Wrap the filling with the ends of the leaf and secure with a toothpick.