How To Make Your Pakoras Healthier And Less Junk?
Hello All!!!
Monsoons are here, and you feel like listening to the old melodious songs that welcome the rains, don’t you? Personally, I like ‘Ghanan Ghanan from Lagaan; not an old one, though, but a great song to welcome the monsoon! So, that was about music, the food for your soul. What about food for your tummy? 😛 Yes, the mind associates certain foods with the rains, and who can say no to piping hot pakoras? You can call them fritters, but I choose to call them the desi way, ‘pakoras.’ Fritters make them sound too foreign 😛
Now, how can I be canvassing for pakoras while being a part of the Indian weight loss blog? Aren’t they junk food? Yes, they are! But you can have a healthier version of your favorite pakoras by being a little smart and making changes in the way of cooking. Here is how to go about it,
You need to say bye-bye to the conventional way of cooking them. Yes, no more deep frying. All that oil isn’t good for you or your waistline. You also need to adopt new veggies in place of the regularly used potatoes. Pakoras give a lot of room for improvisation. So, you can toss in broccoli, peas, and the like in gram flour this time. How about capsicum? The pakoras will be yum! (Did I just rhyme the two sentences? OMG) Making pakoras out of veggies that have been used so far is indeed intriguing!
Coming back to the cooking method, it is better to bake your pakoras instead of deep frying them in a liter of oil. You can save a lot of calories! Anyways in the monsoon, you should try to avoid oily stuff and keep things light. So, let us get at baking the pakoras!!
Things needed:
- Gram flour- 2 cups
- Baking flour- 1 tsp
- Garam masala- 1 ½ tsp
- Cumin– 1 tsp
- Turmeric– ½ tsp
- Dried coriander- 1 ½ tsp
- Cauliflower- ½ head
- Onion- 1 (finely chopped)
- Peas- 1/3 cup
- Carrot– 1 (grated)
- Potato-1 (grated)
- Olive oil,
- Baking sheet
- Salt
Mix the gram flour and masalas in a large bowl. Add a bit of water to make a batter. To this add all the veggies and place them onto a baking sheet oiled with olive oil instead of deep frying. Bake this for about 8 minutes in the oven. Flip each of the pakoras and bake them for another 10 mins till they become light brown.
You are done! Just enjoy them with green chutney! Baked pakoras look like these-
Baking does away with the conventional way of deep frying pakoras. It is a healthy way of eating pakoras. This way, pakoras lovers can enjoy their pakoras guilt-free almost every day! You are getting lots of nutrients from the variety of veggies you add to the batter. Olive oil used to grease the baking sheet is a healthy fat and has loads of health benefits to offer.
Read the recipe for green chutney here!
If you have an Airfryer, try making your pakoras in it. I have found that if you take care of your besan consistency as well as add a bit of rice flour, your fritters come out great in taste. You can read about Airfryer cooking here…
Do you know which is the best oil for cooking? Let us find out from this link here….
