Hing Kachori

Crisp, flaky pastries from the Braj country, stuffed with black gram spiced with asafoetida, fennel, and coriander, fried slowly, and eaten with hing wale aloo

Origin: Mathura & the Doab, Uttar Pradesh

From the journey of Asafoetida.

A kachori is a fried pastry with a filling, and the hing kachori takes its name from the asafoetida that dominates the filling of coarsely ground black gram. It is a khasta kachori, flaky and crisp, made with a stiff dough rich with ghee and fried slowly in oil that is only moderately hot, so that it puffs gently and turns golden all the way through rather than browning fast on the outside. In the towns of the Braj country around Mathura, and across Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, it is a breakfast eaten with a thin potato curry, the hing wale aloo, and very often with hot jalebis afterwards. The name travels, and so does the confusion. Kolkata's sweet shops sell a hinger kochuri that is a different thing: a soft, thin puri of white flour with a smooth paste of black gram and asafoetida inside, made like a luchi rather than a pastry. The two share a name, a filling, and a seasoning, and differ in almost everything else, and this atlas gives each its own recipe. The filling is cooked in ghee before the kachoris are filled, which is what gives it its dry, crumbly texture and its depth; the asafoetida goes in at the start, so that it cooks through with the dal.

Ingredients

Dough

  • 250 g plain flour (maida)
  • 60 g ghee, melted
  • 0.5 tsp salt
  • 100 ml cold water, approximately

Filling

  • 100 g split skinned black gram (urad dal), soaked for 3 hours and drained
  • 2 tbsp ghee
  • 0.5 tsp compounded asafoetida
  • 1 tsp fennel seeds, coarsely crushed
  • 1 tsp coriander seeds, coarsely crushed
  • 1 tsp fresh ginger, finely grated
  • 1 green chilli, finely chopped
  • 0.5 tsp red chilli powder
  • 0.5 tsp salt
  • 1 tbsp gram flour (besan)

To fry

  • 1 l vegetable oil, for deep-frying

Method

  1. Make the dough. Rub the melted ghee into the flour and salt with your fingertips until the mixture holds together when squeezed in your fist. Add the cold water a little at a time and knead to a firm, smooth dough. Cover and rest for 30 minutes.
  2. Grind the soaked dal to a coarse paste without water, in short pulses.
  3. Heat the ghee for the filling in a frying pan over a low heat. Add the asafoetida, fennel, and coriander and stir for 20 seconds, then add the ginger, green chilli, dal paste, chilli powder, salt, and gram flour.
  4. Cook, stirring and breaking up the paste constantly, for 8 to 10 minutes, until it is dry, crumbly, and smells toasted. Leave it to cool completely.
  5. Divide the dough into 12 balls and the filling into 12 portions. Flatten a ball into a 7 cm round, thinner at the edges than in the middle, place a portion of filling in the centre, gather the edges over it, and pinch them closed. Press it gently into a flat round about 1 cm thick.
  6. Heat the oil until it is only warm, about 140°C. Slide in four or five kachoris and fry them over a low heat for 12 to 15 minutes, turning them now and then, until they have puffed, the pastry has blistered, and they are an even golden brown and crisp.
  7. Drain on kitchen paper and serve hot with hing wale aloo.

Notes

Many cooks fill hing kachoris with split mung dal instead of black gram, or with a mixture of the two. Kachoris keep crisp for a day in an airtight tin and can be warmed in a low oven. Compounded asafoetida usually contains wheat flour, and the dough is wheat in any case.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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