Masala peanuts
Preparation Time
5 minutes
Cooking Time
17 minutes
Difficulty Level
easy
Meal Type
Evening Snack
Serves 6
Key Ingredients
- Raw groundnuts (moongfali), with skin
About This Recipe
Masala peanuts are the coated, spiced groundnuts of railway stalls and bars, usually deep fried so the shell is thick and oily. In Gujarat the snack often goes by masala singdana, from singdana, the Gujarati name for groundnuts.
This version keeps the no-fry stovetop method instead. A thick paste of besan, red chilli, turmeric and amchur is worked over raw, skin-on groundnuts, and the coated nuts roast on a low flame until the paste dries into a thin, crisp shell around each one. The skin stays on and helps the paste grip, while the nut toasts inside its coat, and the shell cracks cleanly between the teeth.
Half a teaspoon of chilli powder gives a mild batch; two teaspoons give a hot one, and halving the besan gives a lighter dusting instead of a shell. Make the paste just before coating, since it dries out if it stands. The groundnut guide covers the nut's names and nutrition.
Ingredient List
Serving Size:
1x
2x
3x
Spice paste
- Besan (bengal gram flour) — 1/4 cup
- Red chilli powder — 1 tsp
- Turmeric Powder — 1/4 tsp
- Amchur (dry mango) powder — 1 tsp
- Salt — 1/2 tsp
- Water — 2 tbsp
Coating
- Raw groundnuts (moongfali), with skin — 1 1/2 cups
- Groundnut oil — 2 tsp
Roasting
- Curry Leaves — 1 sprig
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Serving Suggestions
Pile into small bowls for tea time or with a cold drink, and pack a portion into a tiffin box for the evening. They also scatter well over bhel and chivda bowls. Kept in the sealed jar, they stay crisp for about a week. The moongfali chutney shares the same nut in a different form, and the peanut chikki is its sweet counterpart.
Tips for Cooking Masala peanuts
Low heat and a single layer are the whole method; a hot kadhai blackens the coating before the nuts inside cook. Make the paste thick enough to cling to the nuts but thin enough to spread, and stir the kadhai every minute so no patch sits too long. They crisp further as they cool, so stop when the shells feel set rather than hard.
Chef’s Note
The coating is the point of the dish: it dries into a thin spiced shell around each nut instead of sitting loose like a dusted snack. A small bowl carries about 216 kcal, 9.4 g protein and 4.2 g fibre, the groundnuts and the besan providing the protein and fibre.
Per serving (approx.): 216 kcal, protein 9.4 g, carbs 8.9 g, fat 16 g, fibre 4.2 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 20, 2026
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