Celebrate Onam 2026 With This

Parippu Pradhaman

Recipe Served For Onam Sadhya

Celebrate Onam 2026 with a parippu pradhaman recipe featuring split moong dal, jaggery and coconut milk. It is part of the Onam Sadhya and is served on a banana leaf along with an array of dishes, from something as simple as fried bananas and the raita-like pachadi to erissery and avial, which are mixed vegetable dishes, all with coconut. The steps rarely change across recipes, so getting the sequence right is crucial. The split moong dal is cooked down with jaggery, then coconut milk is added in two stages (one thick, one thin) only at the very end. This payasam is a fixture of the Kerala Sadhya, the elaborate banana-leaf feast served at weddings and during Onam, where a pradhaman or payasam course completes the entire feast. Parippu is the Malayalam and Tamil word for lentil, and moong dal itself is known locally as cherupayaru, which is why this dish is just as often called cherupayaru payasam on Kerala menus. The coconut milk used in this recipe is also freshly extracted. You need both thick and thin coconut milk for parippu pradaman. For this Onam Sadhya sweet dish, the dal is dry-roasted to release its nutty aroma, pressure-cooked, then mashed. This mashed dal should be smooth before being added to a boiling pot of jaggery and then simmered. The thin coconut milk is added after this simmering period. After the flame is switched off, the thicker coconut milk is added and mixed to prevent it from splitting.