A Fabulous Hack - Use your pressure cooker to roast all kinds of flours!

If you use roasted/toasted flours or semolina to make things like rouxs, sheera, rava, laddoos etc, then you will love this hack. One of the most tedious steps in making dishes which need well roasted or browned flour (like laddoos, sheera, upma, etc) is the step of roasting the flour.  While roasting it in an open pan on the stove top, it needs to be done at medium low heat and stirred often. It becomes imperative to stir it continuously as it starts to cook and brown. And as it starts to turn golden brown, if  you get distracted even for a few seconds, the result is burnt flour. For larger quantities, it takes a long time to get to the aromatic toasted stage. However, this is one of those tedious steps that must be done and cannot be omitted. In fact the taste of raw flour in a sweet like mysore pak or besan laddoo can render it inedible.

Well, I decided to use my pressure cooker and see if I could make this process efficient. The first time I tried it out, I used a cup of semolina/rava and then tried the same with 1 cup chickpea flour/besan. And it worked amazingly well for both. I then proceeded to roast a pound of semolina flour using my Instant Pot which has a higher volume capacity. It is now stored in an airtight container, ready to use when needed.

I haven't used this to roast grain yet, but I am sure this can be extended to roast grains too for powders like "thalipeeth or chakali bhajani"

Note: The dessert pictured here is besan laddoo. It needs well roasted chickpea/besan flour. Even a bit of uncooked flour will make it taste terrible. These laddoos were made with the flour roasted using the method below. It usually takes me over an hour and a half,  to make these and I was able to make these from getting the ingredients out, roasting the flour, letting the flour cool, adding the rest of the ingredients and rolling it into balls in 25 minutes.

Ingredients
Flour that you want to roast/toast

Method
Place the flour in a bowl that is pressure cooker safe (I usually use a stainless steel bowl). Now, close this with a tight lid as we want to ensure that water from condensation does not fall into the flour. Since we are going to cook this under pressure, the cooker will have water which will start to condense around the  bowl. If you don't have a lid, cover it tightly with foil.

Pressure cooker
Add 1 cup water, place the container into the cooker and close lid. Turn it on the high heat setting.  (between 8-9 on my electric stove top). The pressure cooker will come to full pressure in about 2-3 minutes. After that cook it for 5 minutes at this high temperature. You will get numerous whistles. The time I counted the whistles I got about 37 whistles. Since you have added a cup of water, there is enough there to prevent all the water from evaporating.
Take it off the heat. Now place a large pan which can contain the amount of flour that is being cooked onto your stovetop and start heating it. Then using a long wooden spoon, release the pressure by pushing the whistle up gently. Do not knock the whistle off, be careful with this step.

Remove the covered bowl, wipe it down making sure that water doesn't get into the bowl. Open up the lid and pour the hot flour into the pan that is being heated. Turn the heat under the pan to high, and stir the flour and roast till you start getting the roasted aroma. At this stage you can turn the heat off or continue till you brown it to the shade you desire. Finally, check that the flour is well roasted to suit your taste by actually tasting it a little. See Tips below for the timings I observed.

Instant Pot
Add one cup of water to the inner pot of the Instant Pot. Place the trivet and then place this bowl containing the flour. Cook it on manual mode, vent closed for 10 minutes.  Let it be on natural pressure release for 5 minutes. Before you release the pressure, place a large pan which can contain the amount of flour that is being cooked onto your stovetop and start heating it.  Then release the pressure by turning knob to vent. (see manual for directions)

Remove the covered bowl, wipe it down making sure that water doesn't get into the bowl. Open up the lid and pour the hot flour into the pan that is being heated. Turn the heat under the pan to high, and stir the flour and roast till you start getting the roasted aroma. At this stage you can turn the heat off or continue till you brown it to the shade you desire. Finally, check that the flour is well roasted to suit your taste by actually tasting it a little. See Tips below for the timings I observed.

Photos of 1 cup chickpea/besan flour roasting steps - done in pressure cooker.

1. Before placing in cooker

2. Covered with a lid (added parchment too as the seal was not airtight)

3. After cooking in the cooker

4. After roasting in the heated pan

5. Added ghee to the roasted flour and then added sugar to make laddoos pictured above

Photos of 1 pound of semolina/rava roasting steps - done in the Instant Pot (IP)

1. Before placing in IP

2. Covered tightly with foil

3. After cooking in IP

4. In the pan

5. After roasting in the heated pan

Tips

For 1 cup of chickpea/besan flour it took 1 min and 41 seconds for the roasted aroma and it started to brown at 2 mins 10 seconds. I took it off the heat and stirred it and it was a good shade of brown by the 3rd min. Then I poured it into a cool bowl to stop it from cooking further in the pan's retained heat.

For 1 lb of semolina/rava it took 3 minutes for the roasted aroma and it started to brown at 3 mins 10 seconds. It was lightly browned by the 5th minute. I took it off the heat and poured it into a cool bowl to stop it from cooking further in the pan's retained heat.

You can add ghee to the pan before pouring the flour into the pan which I did for the besan flour as I was going to use it to make besan laddoos.