Seviyan (vermicelli pudding) is a quintessential South Asian dessert. It can be a simple pudding, where its creamy consistency and floral aroma enjoy the spotlight, or it can be served with toasted nuts and sweet fruit for added texture and depth of flavour.

Thanks to its adaptability, seviyan is a fitting dish for any occasion, from quiet breakfasts to sumptuous celebrations.

What is Seviyan?

Seviyan is the Urdu and Hindi word for ‘vermicelli’. This term usually refers to a sweet dish of vermicelli which may be cooked with or without milk.

Vermicelli is a type of pasta that is made in long, thin strands. For this dish, we break the pasta into smaller pieces before cooking it so that we can eat it with a spoon.

There are many different ways to cook vermicelli. When it is cooked in milk, the result is often called seviyan kheer. Seviyan kheer that is prepared with many additional ingredients, for instance with cardamom, dates, raisins, nuts, saffron, and rosewater, is referred to as sheer khurma.

All ingredients required for seviyan (cardamom pods, vermicelli, milk, blended almonds, white granulated sugar, rosewater, and kewra water) — All ingredients (cardamom pods, vermicelli, milk, blended almonds, white granulated sugar, rosewater, and kewra water)

For this recipe, I will be cooking vermicelli in milk with cardamom, almonds, rosewater, and kewra water.

How I Learned to Cook Seviyan

Preparation

First, I blended the almonds in a food processor. I then roughly broke the vermicelli into pieces with my hands, halving them twice.

Toasting the Vermicelli

After this, I added the vermicelli to a pot with cardamom and the blended almonds.

I then toasted these on low heat until I could smell the vermicelli. This took about 10-15 seconds because the pot had already heated up before I added the ingredients.

Cooking the Vermicelli in Milk

Once the vermicelli finished toasting, I added milk, rosewater, and kewra water. I then proceeded to cook these on low heat until the milk thickened to the consistency I wanted, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

This took approximately 40 minutes.

Adding milk, rosewater, and kewra water to the vermicelli

Once the vermicelli had softened and the milk had sufficiently thickened, I finally added the sugar and stirred for 5 more minutes.

What Has Seviyan Taught Me?

Because I had already learned how to make kheer, cooking another milk-based pudding with similar ingredients was not at all difficult.

The part of this recipe that was completely new to me was toasting the vermicelli. This was easy, but I still had to take care not to overdo it.

To see how I learned to cook other desserts, visit my kheer (rice pudding) recipe. If you have any tips or feedback, feel free to post them in the comments!