Kala chana tikki
Preparation Time
20 minutes
Cooking Time
20 minutes
Difficulty Level
moderate
Meal Type
Evening Snack
Serves 4
Key Ingredients
- Kala chana
About This Recipe
Kala chana tikki are flat round patties of boiled black chickpeas, spiced and pan-fried to a crust. They share the shape of a potato tikki but the body is chana: nuttier, firmer and dotted with the dark skins of the whole gram. Boiled kala chana mash coarse, so the tikki keeps its texture instead of turning to paste.
The chana soak for 6 to 8 hours, or use the hot quick soak, timed in our guide to soaking kala chana, and boil in 6 to 7 whistles. The binder is a quarter cup of rice flour, which holds the patties together without besan and needs no egg or breadcrumbs; swap it for coarsely ground oats to make a kala chana oats tikki. Squeeze the boiled chana dry before mashing, because wet chana make soft tikkis that spread in the pan.
Pan-fried in two tablespoons of groundnut oil, the tikkis come out deep brown and crisp at the edges. In an air fryer at 180 C they need about 12 minutes and only a brush of oil, so they use less of it. Two tikkis in a roti with sliced onion, green chutney and a squeeze of lemon make a wrap for a tiffin.
Ingredient List
Serving Size:
1x
2x
3x
Boiled chana
- Kala chana — 1 cup
- Water — 3 cups
- Salt (half to cook, the rest for the mix) — 1 tsp
Tikki mix
- Rice flour — 1/4 cup
- Small onion, finely chopped — 1 piece
- Ginger, grated — 1 tsp
- Green chilli, finely chopped — 1 piece
- Fresh coriander leaves, chopped — 3 tbsp
- Cumin Powder — 1 tsp
- Coriander Powder — 1 tsp
- Amchur (dry mango) powder — 1/2 tsp
To fry
- Groundnut oil — 2 tbsp
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Serving Suggestions
Serve hot with a mint yogurt dip, green chutney or ketchup, and a salad of sliced onion. Two tikkis in a toasted roti with chutney and onion make a wrap. Cooked tikkis keep up to two days in the fridge; reheat them on a dry tawa so the crust comes back.
Tips for Cooking Kala chana tikki
Mash with a potato masher or your palms, not a blender; a paste makes heavy, dense tikkis. Dry the boiled chana well before mashing, or the patties spread in the pan. Turn each tikki once only; a second flip breaks the crust.
Chef’s Note
Keep some chana whole in the mash, so each bite has a nut in it. Two tikkis from this batch carry about 237 kcal, 10 g of protein and 12.8 g of fibre, mostly from the chana. The same mix shaped into fingers and grilled becomes kala chana kababs.
Per serving (approx.): 237 kcal, protein 10 g, carbs 26 g, fat 10 g, fibre 13 g. Computed from IFCT 2017 / USDA values for the listed quantities. Measures: 1 cup = 240 ml, 1 tbsp = 15 ml, 1 tsp = 5 ml.
Happy Cooking
!!
ByCOWBERRY
Aug 05, 2026
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