chakli –

Chakli is popular savoury snacks from India. It is very crispy, crunchy and spiral shaped. Chakli is prepared with gram flour, rice flour or lentils flour or with the combinations of flours. It is fried snacks and very crunchy and well go with a hot cup of tea. To make perfect crunchy and delicious chakli at home follow my recipe, I will show you how to make them easily at home step by step with photos.

Chakli, mathri, besan barfi, gujiya all these snacks are traditional sweet and savoury dishes. These snacks items specially prepared for the festival season of diwali at home. Without these home made traditional dishes diwali celebration is incomplete. During Diwali celebration lots of guests and family members visit our home to share love, gifts and sweets. Chakli is one of the snacks which is prepared almost every year at my home during diwali. Chakli is so delicious, crunchy, light and go with any sweet dish and most important you can prepare them in advance and can serve to your guest with any sweet dishes.

Variations –

Chakli having lot of other name depends on the regions chakali, chakkuli, chakri, chakralu, or jantikalu are some of the names of chakli. some people also called it murukku, but there is small difference between murukku and chakli.

Chakli is prepared in many ways depends on proportion of flour, it is prepared with gram flour, rice flour, black gram or with the combination of these flour. My favourite one is prepared with rice flour and potato although this is not famous version. These chakli taste amazing, because of use of boil potato chakli do not crunchy as other chakli(mainly prepared with only flour). Soon i will come up with the recipe.

Some people refer chakli as a murukku although there is little difference in the ingredient. Murukku is look like chakli, it is crunchy and taste almost same as chakli the difference is only the use of flour. Murukku is traditional south Indian snacks and prepared with rice flour and and urad daal (black gram) flour where as chakli is traditionally prepared with rice and gram flour.

Shelf life

Chakli is deep fried snacks and it is prepared by using flours, so it has good shelf life you can store them for 15-20 days into an airtight container.

Ingredient and Preparations –

Chakli is made from rice flour, gram flour and black gram(urad dal). Chakli are also spiced up with ingredients such as coriander powder, cumin seed, sesame seeds, red chilli powder, turmeric powder, salt, asafoetida(hing) and oil.

Today I am making chakli with very simple ingredient easily available in your pantry. I am using rice flour and gram flour in 2:1 proportion. In spices I am adding hing, salt, green chilli and ginger paste, turmeric, sesame seeds and oil.

First we prepare dough and then shape up the chakli and later fried them. For preparing dough take rice flour and gram flour, add spices and mix all ingredient well, when mixture become crumbly, start adding hot water to the mixture, rice flour did not have gluten rather it has starch so it work well with hot water(when we cook rice because of starch they become sticky). Add little water at time and knead a soft dough. Cover and leave it for 30 minutes.

For making perfect chakli dough consistency play major role, if your dough is hard and not enough moist. When you make chakli they will start cracking. If dough is too sticky, you won’t be able to shape them. So keep the dough soft enough, so it can easily pass through the chakli maker and you can shape them easily.

Grease the chakli maker by using brush. After 30 minutes uncovered and knead the dough again, fill the chakli maker with dough, Always leave little space for closing the lid of chakli maker. Place butter paper or aluminium foil on your kitchen counterpart so it will be easy to remove them for frying. start pressing chakli maker and move in round to give it spiral shape. If you are making in large amount cover the shaped chakli with dry cloth so they can stay moist.

Take a pan for deep frying, heat oil. It is important to fry chakli at the right temperature. To check the temperature take a small piece of dough and drop it in the hot oil. If dough gradually comes up it means oil is ready for frying. Fry chakli on low medium heat until they turn golden brown. Take them out on the kitchen towel to soak excess oil.

Important notes –

1. Dough should be soft and moist for perfect chakli.
2. Fry chakli on low medium heat else they turn brown without cooking from inside.
3. When you slid the chakli in the oil, make sure oil is hot enough else they will absorb too much oil.
4. For maintaining crunchiness for long time always store chakli into an airtight container.

I have made some more snacks recipe which has better shelf life and can be store in airtight jar for longer time like Nankhatai, palak ke matar, papdi, ribbon pakora, karela mathri , besan barfi please click on the name to get the full recipe.

Watch video –

Printable recipe –

Chakli recipe step by step with photos –

1. Take a mixing bowl add rice flour and gram flour.
   
2. Add spices like hing/asafoetida, turmeric, salt, ginger-chilli paste, sesame seeds and oil to it.
3. Mix all ingredient well, until mixture become crumbly.
   
4. Now add hot water little at time to knead a soft dough.
5. Cover the dough and leave it for 30 minutes.
   
6. Meanwhile Take a chakli maker, grease it by using brush.
   
7. After 30 minutes uncovered the dough, kneed it again and roll it to the cylindrical shape.
   
8. Fill the greased chakli maker with some dough, use a star shape to make chakli.
   
9. Place a butter paper or aluminium foil to your kitchen counterpart.
10. Prepare the chakli by pressing the machine, make spiral shape and seal the corner on the butter paper, so we can easily pickup these chakli.
    
11. Heat oil in a pan, slid prepared chakli into the hot oil.
    
12. fry chakli until they turn golden brown on low medium heat.
    
13. Take out the chakli on a kitchen towel to remove excess oil. Let it cool and transfer to an airtight container.
    If you like this recipe, and you happen to try this please let us know in comment section how did they turn out.