Instant Chakli Recipe / Maharashtrian Chakli

Notes

• General Notes:
• 1. It’s a good idea to first prepare only a couple of chakli and deep fry them immediately to test whether the dough is right. 
• 2. If the chakli breaks while deep frying, there’s too much fat in the dough. Add a bit more rice and knead again with some warm water.
• 3. If the chakli is too hard to bite into, add a couple of teaspoons of oil (at room temperature) to the dough and knead again. 
• 4. Always extrude the chakli dough out in small batches and deep fry them immediately. This way you can adjust the dough if the chakli doesn’t come out well.
• 5. If the chakli spirals are likely to be left for longer than 5 minutes before deep frying, cover them with a dry cotton cloth or paper towel.
• 6. You can use grease-proof paper to rest the extruded chakli spirals on instead of the greased steel plates. However, the equal-sized steel plates help with making more uniform chaklis.
• 7. In this recipe I didn’t heat the oil before adding it to the dough. My chakli came out crunchy despite that. However, I’d be interested to hear your feedback if you tried this recipe using warm oil.
• 8. You can spice up the chakli dough by adding ginger-garlic paste or even dried chilli flakes.
• 9. Use the slotted spoon to gently place the chakli in hot oil at the time of frying instead of dropping by hand. This is not only safer but also stops the burnt debris that settles at the bottom of the kadhai from getting stirred up and ending up on the chakli.
• 10. I like adding freshly roasted & ground coriander seed and cumin seed to the flour at the time of making the dough. To make it fresh, simply toast the cumin and coriander seeds separately until fragrant. Let them cool and then grind them in a coffee grinder to get that fragrant and fresh toasted coriander and cumin seed powder. 
• 11. Skip asafoetida to make it gluten-free.
• 12. Ensure the smooth side of the star-shaped chakli plate of the extruder is placed facing inwards and the rough side is facing outwards.
• The dough:
• 1. The dough should be tight but moist enough to bind together so that the chakli spirals don’t break when passed through the chakli maker. A tight dough will make sharp pretty spikes on the chakli spirals. Make it too soft and it will be too smooth and as a result, your chakli will not be so crunchy. It’s all about maximising the surface area exposed to the hot oil.
• 2. If the dough is too tight and breaks easily when passed through the chakli maker add a couple of teaspoons of water to the dough, knead and try again. 
• 3. If the dough is too soft, add a couple of tablespoons of sifted rice flour and ground roasted gram and knead again.
• 4. It’s ok if the dough strand breaks occasionally. Simply add it back to the lump of dough.
• 5. The chakli dough should be left covered at all times. It has a tendency to dry out.
• 6. Forming a neat spiral whilst winding the chakli maker takes practice and patience. If making chakli for the first time, give yourself time to practice. If you persevere, after a few scruffy or broken efforts, you’ll soon be producing beautiful spirals.
• The frying oil:
• 1. Start frying only when the oil is hot. The oil temperature should be high (but not so high that it’s smoking) at the start of the frying process. 
• 2. The oil temperature whilst frying should be optimum and steady. If it’s too hot, it will brown the chakli too quickly without cooking the inside. A good way to visually gauge whether the oil is too hot is if it starts smoking. At that point, turn the flame down to medium-low. Always test the oil temperature by first dropping a tiny bit of dough into the oil as mentioned in the recipe.
• 3. If the oil temperature is too low, the chakli will sink to the bottom of the kadhai rather than sizzling and rising to the top. It’ll come out greasy, soft, and undercooked. A top-tip to avoid this situation is to only fry a couple of chakli at a time. If you add too many at once, the oil temperature will drop suddenly.