Mahanandi

Living in Consciousness ~ Indi(r)a’s Food and Garden Weblog

Peanut Chutney (Groundnut Chutney)

Buddala Pacchadi:

Peanut chutney is the usual accompaniment to breakfast dishes like upma, pongal, pesarattu, dosa, and vada at my home so I prepare peanut chutney quite often. Also it makes a decent substitute to coconut chutney. Fresh coconut is a premium thing here at Ohio, because of that whenever a chutney recipe is called for I usually go with home classic, a crowd pleaser and an Andhra delight ~ peanut chutney (Buddala pachadi in Telugu language).

Peanut chutney ingredients
Peanut Chutney Ingredients

Recipe:

1 cup – peanuts
5 dried red chillies
1 small onion and 1 garlic clove – sliced to big chunks
2 teaspoons – tamarind pulp or to taste
½ tsp salt or to taste
For popu or tadka – 1 tsp each – cumin, mustard seeds, urad dal and six curry leaves

First step is roasting the peanuts.

If I have some time to kill, I usually go for stove-top method.
Place an iron skillet on stove top and on medium heat, slowly roast the peanuts to golden brown color. Cool and rub the skins off. I love the roasted peanut taste produced in this slow-cooking method.

In a rush, needs to prepare quickly, then I go for microwave method.
Pick a wide and big microwave safe bowl. Place peanuts and microwave them for 2-4 minutes, uncovered. How fast the roasting process is done depends on how powerful the microwave is and the quantity of peanuts. After each minute of microwaving, remove the bowl and mix or turn the peanuts with a spoon for even cooking. Microwave again for another one minute and repeat the process. Do this until the cream colored peanuts turn to light brown color. I have to warn you though, just like in any roasting process, microwave method is also a delicate one and in a split second perfectly golden peanuts could turn to charcoal black. Please be careful and pay attention to the process, if this is your first time. Once you get the hang of it, it will be really a breeze to roast peanuts in a microwave.

Step Two:
Heat a tablespoon of oil to smoking point in an iron skillet. Add and brown dried red chillies, onion and garlic.

Wait few minutes for them to cool down. This cooling process somehow increases the chutney taste tremendously and saves the motor blade of your mixer from melting.

Take roasted peanuts in a blender/food processor. Grind to fine.
Add other ingredients, plus tamarind, salt and a cup of water.
Grind to fine consistency.
Remove the chutney to a bowl.
Do the popu or tadka (toast popu ingredients listed above, in half teaspoon of oil in a vessel), add them to the chutney. This is always the final seasoning thing we do.
Mix and serve.

For breakfast dishes like upma, dosas, idlies etc, I always make the chutney little bit watery (see the chutney photo below). If the chutney is for rice (yes, it tastes quite good with rice also) I’d make the chutney little bit tight with as little amount of water as possible. (In the first case we have to dunk the breakfast item in chutney and in second case we have to mix it with rice and shape it into a round.)

Peanut chutney
Peanut Chutney

Posted by Indira©Copyrighted in Amma & Authentic Andhra,Dry Fruits, Nuts & Seeds,Peanuts (Friday May 13, 2005 at 1:50 pm- permalink)
Comments (54)

The New Home of Mahanandi: www.themahanandi.org