Murukulu / Savoury snack

There is lots of crunchiness in the name itself. Aa ha going back to nostalgia. Mom always prepares them at least once in a month. Just to make her life easy, she always prepares them either before we wake up or after we sleep so that we can avoid the accidents in the kitchen.

My mom’s preparation starts with soaking the rice, drain and dry them under shade. Roast Urad daal and the shade dried rice and bribe one of us to go to the grinding mill (Pindi mara). She also adds coarsely ground roasted peanuts to give the extra nutty flavour and crunchiness. Unfortunately due to lack of time, now-a-days most of us end up with buying the ready made flours. I managed to find the ready made roasted flours in London.

Ingredients:
4 cups – Rice flour
1 cup – Roasted Urad flour
½ cup – sesame seeds - roasted
½ cup – pea nuts – roasted,skinned and coarsely ground
Salt – 1 1/2 to 2 tbsp
Chilli powder – 1 tbsp
Oil to deep fry

Method:

Heat a kadai/ deep pan with oil to deep fry. Whilst oil is getting hot (Time management), sieve the flours along with salt and chilli. This is the easiest method I found to mix different flours with out much effort. If you don’t have the sieve, no worries. Just mix every thing with hand and add coarsely ground peanuts and sesame seeds. Once all the dry bits are mixed well, add about 3 ladles full of hot oil. Do not put your hands straight into the hot oil, instead, cover the hot oil with the flour and slowly try to mix every thing by adding water little by little until you get the dough consistency.

Muruku dough

Take the muruku mould and fill it with the dough.

Muruku mould filled with muruku dough

Apply pressure to squeeze the dough. Experts, they squeeze the dough directly into the oil, where as the beginners like me will squeeze the muruku on a butter paper or plastic paper. 

Slowly lift them into hand one at a time and slowly slip them into the oil. Fry them till golden colour. Remove them using slotted spoon. Drian and allow them to cool down. Store them in an air tight container.

Enjoy spicy muruku with hot chai

Note: If you feel, the dough is bit dry or hard, take part of the dough, sprinkle some water and then knead it again.