PALAK PAKODA
DRIVING SPICE AND A BESAN BATTER HAS THESE PAKORAS SING.
Once a month or so, I make Friday night snacks to take up to my volunteer fire brigade and serve to my friends and fellow volunteers with beer. These palak pakoras are always a win. I love making them, and they love eating them.
RECIPE DETAILS
Serves: 2 to 4 as a snack
Prep time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: 10 minutes.
Dietary Style: Gluten Free | Vegetarian | Dairy Free | Vegan
INGREDIENTS
- 2 cups vegetable or neutral oil
- 1 bunch silverbeet or spinach
- 1/3 cup besan (chickpea) flour
- cold water
- 1 tsp fine white lake salt
- 1/2 to 1 tsp hot red chilli powder
- 1 tsp dried red chilli flakes
- 1 tsp ajwain seed
- 1/2 tsp fennel seed
METHOD
How to make our palak pakoda or spinach pakora recipe.
STEP 1
Combine all the spices in the besan flour. Add cold water a little at a time and, combining with your hand, work to get the batter to the consistency of a thick pancake batter. If you make a mistake and the batter is too runny, simply stir through a little more of the chickpea flour.
STEP 2
Wash and chop the silverbeet. Use as much of the bunch as you need to finish the spicy batter. This quantity should make enough for 4 to 6 large silver beet leaves, roughly chopped.
STEP 3
Heat the oil in a large cast iron wok, kadai, or deep fryer. Once very hot but not smoking, add the silverbeet or spinach leaves that have been dredged in the spicy batter. Deep fry for 5 to 7 minutes per batch, or until very crispy. Drain on newspaper or kitchen towel.
LEARN MORE ABOUT
PAKORAS
Are they called pakora or pakoda?
Either name is correct. Because Indian regional languages have different scripts and phonetics, the English language spellings of words often has more than one spelling.
What is a pakora?
A pakora is a fried snack, normally a vegetable that has been cut into pieces, dipped in spiced besan flour and then deep fried and served hot.
How do you make pakoras?
Pakoras are a simple snack to make. All you need is some strong spices, vegetables of your choice, oil to fry, and besan or rice flours to use as the batter base.
Are pakoras always gluten-free?
Normally. Pakoras are generally made by using a besan flour batter. Though that being said, rice flour batters mixed with a little plain flour or maida can sometimes also be used.
KITCHEN HACKS
