Crispy Pappu Chekkalu Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 cups Rice flour
- 1 cup Chana dal soaked at least for 1 hour
- Few Curry leaves
- 1/2 cup Melted Butter
- Oil for deep frying
- 1 inch Ginger
- 4 Green chillies
- Water for mixing
- Salt as per taste
Instructions
- Grind the ginger and green chillies to a coarse paste.
- Sieve the rice flour and transfer to a large mixing bowl.
- To the flour, add salt, butter, soaked split chickpeas, ginger and chilli paste and mix well.
- Adding little water at a time, knead to the thick dough and keep aside for 5 mins. The dough should be a little thicker than the roti dough.
- Heat oil for dry frying in a thick bottomed Kadai. Once the oil is ready, test the oil for the proper heat by adding a small amount of dough into the oil and it should rise immediately.
- Once the oil is ready, take a medium-sized ball of the dough which fits your palm. Drop into oil by pressing with three fingers using the thumb slowly into the pan.
- If you are not okay with pressing them like that directly into the pan, you can also use the same dough to press the regular circular chekkalu. Take a polythene cover and press a small ball of dough into a circle and drop it into the Kadai. In this method, you have to keep ready at least 2 batches of chekkalu at a time to drop into the oil.
- Fry these chekkalu / rice crackers till golden brown and store in an airtight container.
Notes
* While frying chekkalu, the dough should not be left open as it will be dried up. Instead cover the dough with a moist cloth completely. The cloth should be moist not wet and no water should be dripping from it. This is to retain the moisture in the dough and not to dry up.
** My mother makes her rice flour every time she makes chekkalu. She soaks rice and lets the dry on a cloth in a cool place till the moisture is gone. Then she grinds the rice to a fine powder. She calls it “thadi pindi” and she uses it all up at one go. But if you think you cannot do all that, you can use the regular rice flour we get in the market and still get those crispy chekkalu.