We created our own winter holiday custom; making murukulu, our favorite savory snacks. Vijay’s birthday comes during this month, and he loves murukulu more than anything. So, I make them in large quantity for his b’day and also for us, to snack all throughout the month of December, the traditional holiday season here.
Murukulu and hot tea, South Indian style, under the gorgeous golden rays of wintry Sunset.
For the uninitiated, murukulu are India’s snack food. They are made with spiced up rice and lentil flour dough, pressed using a mold into beautiful round coils, then deep-fried in oil. Krum. karum is the sound they make when munched. Indian grocery shops usually carry several varieties of these snacks, try them out first, before trying out the recipe. For who know, love and want to try making murukulu at home, here is the recipe.
Recipe:
2 cups – Rice flour
1/2 cup – Gram flour (Besan)
1/2 cup – Moong flour (Pesara Pindi)
…
1/4 cup – sesame seeds
1 teaspoon each – cumin and ajwan/vaamu (carom seeds)
1/2 teaspoon each- red chilli powder and salt
Pinch of baking powder
Some tips for good quality murukulu:
1. Boiled and Mashed Potato – a tip from my attamma for soft yet crunchy murukulu. One small potato will do for the above measurements. To make the dough more easy to work with, and as emulsifier, she substituted the ghee with the boiled and mashed potato paste. It is a great tip that works.
2. Peanut oil for deep frying – I find it that murukulu tastes great when deep-fried in peanut oil. I tried canola, corn oil… They go rancid only after 15 minutes on high heat and murukulu also taste almost bitter.
Muruku maker with discs – You can buy it in almost all major Indian grocery/appliance shops here in US, or you can try online stores. Cookie press like Sawa or Cookie guns are also good for muruku making.
Preparation:
Sieve and mix together the flours. Add the sesame seeds, pureed potato paste, red chilli powder, baking powder, salt, cumin and ajwan seeds. Make a soft dough by adding the water gradually. Dough shouldn’t be too stiff. Take small portion of dough and make a cylindrical shaped log and drop it into the muruku mold, like shown in the photo above.
Deep Frying:
In a wok like deep, sturdy vessel, heat the peanut oil to hot. With your hands, press the muruku mold over the hot oil, making concentric circles, so that the coils of dough come out and drop into the hot oil in circle shape. When you are practiced at making them, you can get two to three circles of dough coils, successfully. My level of expertise at making these beautiful circles is a hit and miss. Anyway you make them, they will turn out, one tasty, crunchy snack, so don’t stress out too much about circles and technique, I don’t.
Fry both sides till golden, and then remove. It takes approximately 5 minutes to fry one batch. Repeat till all the dough is used. Let them cool and store in an airtight container.
During frying, always keep the stove heat on very high. Just by changing the discs, one can make several different shaped murukulu. Shammi of Food in the Main, made recently ribbon shaped muruku for Diwali. I usually use medium round holes disc and star shaped holes disc. The ones photographed here are made using the star shaped holes disc.
A plate of Murukulu
Recipe Source: Attamma (MIL)
