The history of the laddu offered to Sri Venkateswara Swamy, a form of Lord Vishnu, and then given to the devotees as 'prasadam' in the revered Tirupati shrine is over 300 years. It is believed that the temple started offering the laddu as prasadam to devotees in 1715.
The famous prasadam, which has a distinct taste and aroma, is prepared in a special kitchen and only a particular section has been doing this work for centuries. More tan 600 workers are employed for the job and it is said that the laddu makers have to shave their heads and wear a single clean cloth while in the temple kitchen, known as 'potu'. Ten ingredients that go into the making of the laddus are ghee, chickpea gram flour, sugar, small sugar cubes, cashew nut, cardamom, camphor, and raisins.
Around 3 to 3.5 lakh laddus are made every day and the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, the board that manages the temple, gets these ingredients through e-auction. The tendering process had shifted to online in 2022 to reduce human intervention. The laddus got a GI tag 2009, which means no one else can sell them.
Devotees can buy these laddus at the time of exit from the temple and they come in three sizes. Smaller ones are free of charge for all devotees, while the medium laddus cost ₹50 and the large ones cost ₹200, as per Tirupati Balaji Travels. They usually last up to 15 days.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has claimed that a key ingredient used to prepare the laddus given as 'prasadam' in the revered Sri Venkateswara temple contains animal fats and fish oil. He alleged that animal fat was used instead of ghee to make the 'prasadam' when his predecessor Jagan Mohan Reddy was the Chief Minister. TDP has alleged the use of beef tallow, lard, fish oil and palm oil in the laddus.
Beef Tallow is made by removing, simmering and clarifying the fatty tissue of beef. Beef tallow is typically used for cooking at high temperatures such as deep frying and roasting. Lard has now been replaced by vegetable oil in most kitchens. Lard is a semi-solid white fat product obtained by rendering the fatty tissue of a pig.
