Mathri
Preparation Time
30 minutes
Cooking Time
30 minutes
Difficulty Level
easy
Meal Type
Evening Snack
Serves 6
Key Ingredients
- Sharbati atta (whole wheat flour)
About This Recipe
Mathri is the flaky, salted biscuit of the tiffin box: a stiff wheat dough, cut with ghee, fried to a pale gold and eaten with tea or pickle. Its layers come from ghee rubbed into the flour cold, the way short pastry is cut, so the fat stays in streaks and the fried round flakes apart in sheets. The dough here is sharbati gehu atta.
The dough is mixed to a sand-like texture and rested, then rolled and cut into rounds that are pricked with a fork before frying; the pricks stop the rounds from ballooning into puris and keep them flat and even. The fry is a slow one at low heat, so the ghee inside has time to melt into flakes before the outside colours.
Ajwain and crushed black pepper season the dough, and the recipe takes variations easily: knead in a handful of crushed dried kasuri methi for a kasuri methi mathri, or press whole peppercorns and kasuri methi into the tops. The sakkarpara recipe on this site is the sweet, diamond-cut cousin from the same dough family.
Ingredient List
Serving Size:
1x
2x
3x
For the dough
- Sharbati atta (whole wheat flour) — 2 1/2 cups
- Ghee, cold — 6 tbsp
- Ajwain (carom) seeds — 1 tsp
- Black pepper, crushed — 1/2 tsp
- Salt — 1 tsp
- Water — 1/2 cup
For frying
- Groundnut oil for the kadhai — 500 ml
- Groundnut oil absorbed while frying — 3 tbsp
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Serving Suggestions
Serve mathris with hot tea, a bowl of mango or lime pickle and a few green chillies, or crush them over a bowl of thick curd with roasted cumin. Pack a handful in a tiffin with pickle on the side; they stay crisp for weeks in an airtight jar.
Tips for Cooking Mathri
Keep the ghee cold and rub only until the mix looks like sand; overworking it melts the streaks and the layers disappear. Rest the dough before rolling, or the rounds shrink and curl in the oil. Prick every round through to the board, or it balloons as soon as it hits the oil. Fry on low and turn often; a mathri that browns fast stays soft in the middle.
Chef’s Note
Cold ghee is the whole trick: it melts into layers during the slow fry, and the round flakes apart like sheets. A serving of four mathris comes to about 365 kcal, with 5.4 g of protein and 5.8 g of fibre from the atta, most of the fat from the ghee and the oil they absorb.
Per serving (approx.): 365 kcal, protein 5.4 g, carbs 33 g, fat 23 g, fibre 5.8 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 26, 2026
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