Mixed Vegetable Pakoras

What do you do with an assortment of vegetables when the clock says snack-time? Make mixed vegetable pakoras, if you ask me. This pakora recipe does not demand exactness; take the broad template and switch around the veggies and/or quantities as you wish.

You Need:

[For 8-10 pakoras]

Assorted vegetables:

• Onions – 2 medium chopped
• Beans – 1/2 cup, chopped
• Carrots – 1/2 cup, chopped
• Cauliflower – 1/2 cup, chopped
• Cabbage – 1 cup chopped
• Green chili – 1 teaspoon finely chopped (optional)

Batter ingredients:

• Besan (gram flour) – 1/2 cup approx (adjust to consistency, details in section “Prepare the batter”) [buy here]
• Red chili powder – 1/4 teaspoon [buy here]
• Cumin powder – 1/4 teaspoon [buy here]
• Pepper powder – 1/4 teaspoon [buy here]
• Turmeric powder – 1/4 teaspoon [buy here]
• Salt – 1/4 teaspoon or to taste

For frying:

• Vegetable oil or peanut oil

Equipment:

• kadhai, ladle

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How To Make Mixed Vegetable Pakoras:

1. Prepare the batter

Place the chopped onions, carrots, beans, cauliflower, cabbage and green chilies in a mixing bowl. Sprinkle over the vegetables 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Mix well and set aside for half an hour.

After half an hour, the vegetables would have given off water thanks to the salt (osmosis, for the science-minded). At this stage, sprinkle besan over the vegetables, also throw in the dry spice powders: red chili powder, cumin powder, pepper powder, turmeric powder.

Keep turning the contents of the mixing bowl with a ladle as you add the besan; stop when the besan and vegetables form a batter of “droppable” consistency. The batter should be runnier than chapati dough, thicker than pancake / cheela batter. In case you accidentally added too much besan, it is OK to fix it with a little extra water.

Let the batter stand for another half an hour. Here’s how it looks, all set to fry:

2. Shape and fry

[We’ll shape the pakoras using the ladle in this recipe – the more dexterous and so inclined are welcome to use their palms instead.]

Heat a pan or kadhai and pour enough oil into it for deep-frying.

When the oil is hot*, gently place ladlefuls of the besan-vegetable batter on the oil: one ladle = one pakora. The fun bit is that there is no geometric precision needed in the “shaping” – these are no triangle parathas or their ilk; you can go all wabi-sabi on pakoras and they work just fine! The art is in the frying, not in the form.

To fry right, make sure there are no overlaps between the pakoras and no batter sticking to the sides of the pan. My pan had space enough for frying six at a time: depending on the size of your pan, adjust the count per batch as well as the quantity of oil.

*How hot should the oil be? To test, drop a teeny tiny batter ball into the oil. If the batter ball sizzles and browns on contact, the oil is hot enough – proceed with the rest of the batter. If the batter ball remains raw for more than a few seconds, let the oil heat up more. On the other hand, if it smokes and turns blackish, the oil is too hot – turn off the heat for a while and then start frying.

When the undersides of the pakoras get gold-rimmed, turn them over and let the other side cook. Fry till golden-brown all around.

Pick the pakoras out of the pan / kadhai using a slotted spoon or spatula. Place them on absorbent paper.

Get ready to fry the next batch of pakoras.

Top with more frying oil if needed before you add the next batch. After adding more oil, wait till it heats up to the right degree and then add the next batch of pakoras to the oil.

Fry by batches till all the batter is used up.

Mixed vegetable pakoras are ready to relish!

Serve hot along with coriander chutney or roasted tomato chili chutney.

Notes:

Interested in more snacktime options? Take a look at these recipes:

Thinking about more ways for using up small quantities of several vegetables? Here are a few: