Murukku
Preparation Time
32 minutes
Cooking Time
22 minutes
Difficulty Level
moderate
Meal Type
Evening Snack
Serves 6
Key Ingredients
- Rice flour (from sona masoori rice, ground at home)
About This Recipe
Murukku is the spiral snack of Tamil Nadu, made in big batches for Deepavali. The dough is rice flour with a little roasted urad dal flour, and that small share of dal is what makes the fried spiral crisp and light instead of hard.
Here the rice flour is ground at home from plain sona masoori rice, and the urad dal is roasted before grinding, one part dal flour to eight parts rice flour. Ajwain gives the savoury note that plain salt cannot, and hot oil streamed into the flour keeps the fried coil airy. The dough rests for seven minutes before pressing so the flours drink the oil and water evenly.
The colour is the whole test: pale gold means dry and crisp inside, a dark one fried too fast and kept a soft centre. Swap the ajwain for sesame seeds for a plainer coil, or add a pinch of chilli powder for heat. Store-bought rice flour works if it is fine and fresh, and the dough should have the give of chapati dough, pliable without sticking to the fingers.
Ingredient List
Serving Size:
1x
2x
3x
Flours
- Rice flour (from sona masoori rice, ground at home) — 2 cups
- Urad dal flour (from white urad dal, roasted and ground) — 4 tbsp
Dough
- Ajwain (carom seeds) — 1 tsp
- Salt — 1 tsp
- Groundnut oil, for the dough — 2 tbsp
- Water — 3/4 cup
Frying
- Groundnut oil for deep frying — 500 ml
- Groundnut oil absorbed while frying — 4 tbsp
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Serving Suggestions
Serve murukku with evening filter coffee or pack a few into a lunchbox for a mid-morning crunch. They need no accompaniment, though a little coconut chutney does no harm. Once fully cool, keep them in an airtight jar and they hold their crunch. Strain the leftover frying oil through a fine sieve and use it for the next deep-fry within a day or two.
Tips for Cooking Murukku
Knead in the water a spoon at a time; a dough that is too dry cracks at the plate and one that is too wet drinks oil. The oil is ready when a pea of dough sinks, pauses, and floats up gently. The bubbling is the timer: when it fades, the coil has dried out and is done. Cool the fried murukku completely before any jar goes on, or the trapped steam undoes the crunch.
Chef’s Note
Roasted urad dal flour is the whole trick: rice flour alone fries into something hard and dense, while the dal aerates the coil as it fries. Roast it only until it smells nutty, never to colour, or the murukku turns bitter. Three to four murukku, a sixth of the batch, come to about 293 kcal and 4.4 g of protein, which the rice and dal flours supply, while the frying oil supplies nearly all the fat.
Per serving (approx.): 293 kcal, protein 4.4 g, carbs 34 g, fat 15 g, fibre 1.8 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
Sep 08, 2026
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