Thenkuzhal

Thenkuzhal

INGREDIENTS

·         Rice flour/ Idiyappam flour – 2 cups

·         Urad dal flour – 1/4 cup

·         Butter + Oil – 3 tbsp

·         Asafetida – 1/4 tsp

·         Cumin seeds or sesame seeds – 1 & 1/2 tsp

·         Salt and water – As needed

·         Oil – For deep frying

Method

1.    First, mix rice flour, urad al flour, butter (melted), oil, asafetida, jeera,salt well and then add water to make a non-sticky dough.

2.    Heat oil in kadai side by side, enough to deep fry the murukkus. Fill the murukku press with this dough with murukku hole plate. I always grease some ladles and make murukku first in that then drop them in oil. This way we can make decent shapes also our hands won’t feel the heat. Deep fry in medium flame.

3.    Cook both sides till the sound ceases and murukku turn golden in color. Drain in paper towel and cool down completely before storing them in airtight containers.

Notes

• Make sure you keep the dough covered throughout to avoid drying of the dough.
• Even if you want to make in large numbers, do it in batches. As if you make more dough and keep for while you make murukku, the last batches tend to get fried in deep golden color, so color may be different.
• Make sure the rice flour you use is fine in texture. Otherwise the murukku will break. Even if the urad dal powder is coarse, the murukku will break.
• For this murukku my mom says it’s not necessary to fry urad dal / urad dal flour. They just give rice and urad dal to the mill and get it ground and make murukku. So if you get ready-made urad dal flour at stores, you can use it as such too. I used store bought urad dal flour.
• If you add more urad dal powder, then color will vary. Also takes long time to cook and crispiness also reduces. But only if you add very much more than the mentioned ratio. Approximation works fine.
• Butter gives whiter color and crisp texture.
• Make sure you deep fry in enough oil, otherwise the murukku, if touches the bottom of the pan will lead to uneven browning.
• After few batches, you may want to top up more oil for frying, as it gets absorbed.