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Recipes with papad khar

3 recipes that use papad khar, with photos, step-by-step instructions and cook times. The quickest, Kerala pappadam, takes 90 minutes. It is most often cooked with cumin seeds, gluten-free urad dal flour and black peppercorns.

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Urad dal papadPeppery lentil crisps

Bikaner and the old Punjabi bazaars of Amritsar have made black-pepper urad papads for generations, and summer is when home kitchens still roll them: the dry heat crisps a whole tray on the terrace in a day or two. The dough is unlike any bread dough. It is stiff, grey-cream, seasoned hard with crushed pepper, cumin and asafoetida, and given its snap by papad khar (an alkaline salt sold at Indian grocers), then pounded until it turns smooth and stretchy. Rolled thinner than a chapati and sun-dried, the discs keep for months. Roast one over a gas flame and it blisters and curls in seconds, ready to eat beside dal-chawal, kadhi or a Rajasthani thali, or to crush into papad churi and papad ki sabzi. These are large, spicy and meant to be roasted; for the small, plain, coconut-oil-fried kind from Kerala, see pappadam. Chef's tip: dry the papads in light shade for the first hour before moving them into full sun; straight into harsh sun, the edges dry before the middle and they crack and curl.

135 minIndianSnacks & StartersVeganGluten free
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Khichiya papadRice flour crisps

Every Gujarati kitchen knows khichu, the soft, steaming rice-flour dough cooked with cumin, green chilli and papad khar and eaten hot with a drizzle of groundnut oil and methia masala. Khichiya papad is what happens when the same dough is pressed paper-thin and dried on the terrace through April and May, a job that once filled whole lanes in Surat and Ahmedabad with women working in groups. Fried or roasted, khichiya puffs into a light, crunchy, faintly salty disc with flecks of cumin and a mild chilli warmth. It is eaten with Gujarati dal-bhaat-shaak, crumbled over khichdi, or turned into masala khichiya at the farsan shop: brushed with oil and topped with chilli powder, chaat masala, onion and sev. Chef's tip: press the khichu while it is still warm and soft. Once it cools, it firms up and cracks at the edges, so work in small batches and keep the rest covered in the pan.

110 minIndianSnacks & StartersVeganGluten free
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Kerala pappadamPlain lentil crisps

No sadya on a banana leaf in Thrissur or Kottayam is complete without a pappadam, and nobody eats it whole: it gets crushed over rice with parippu (dal) and ghee, or with payasam at the end of the meal. The Kerala kind is small, about the size of a saucer, and plain. There is no pepper or cumin, just urad dal, salt and pappada karam (papad khar), so the flavour is clean and lentilly. It is dried only briefly, which keeps it pliable, and when it hits hot coconut oil it puffs into a blistered, bubbly dome that shatters at a touch. That is the opposite of the big, peppery north Indian urad papad, which is sun-dried hard and roasted over a flame. Pappadam makers in Kerala are a whole craft community, but a home batch is very doable. Chef's tip: fry in coconut oil at about 180 °C and press the pappadam down for a second with a slotted spoon; it should puff in under 5 seconds and stay pale gold.

90 minIndianSnacks & StartersVeganGluten free
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Goes well with papad khar