Thattai recipe

Thattai recipe with video & step by step photos. Thattai are popular deep fried Indian Snacks made with rice flour, urad dal flour, salt and herbs. These crunchy rice crackers are from the Tamil cuisine and are also known as thattu vadai. During the festive season thattai & murukku are made in most South Indian homes as festivals are incomplete without fresh homemade delicacies.

Thattai are known as Nippattu in karnataka and chekkalu in Andhra. However all these 3 are different in texture and taste as they are made with different proportions and ingredients.

Each home has their own recipe of making these to suit their personal preference. This recipe yields light, tasty and crispy thattai that you can make for a tea time snack.

Making perfectly crunchy traditional rice flour snacks begins with rinsing the rice well, draining and drying. Then milled to flour as the fresh ground flour enhances the aroma & texture of these snacks.

To make thattai and murukku, I follow the same traditional method & make rice flour at home using raw rice during festivals. However this time I have made these using store bought rice flour.

If you have a helping hand home then I suggest making thattai with homemade rice flour as they taste the best.

If using store bought rice flour make sure you use the one from an Indian brand preferably South Indian brands. There are tons of varieties of rice flour available in the market – made with long rice, sticky rice, glutinous rice, boiled rice etc.

Many of these do not work well to make these rice crackers. Unknowingly I had tried these snacks a few years ago with different kinds of flours and they turned out to be soft within hours.

So the key to tasty and crunchy thattai is good rice flour. If you are a beginner, I would highly recommend watching the thattai recipe video and the following the step by step photo instructions.

You may like to check these festive snacks recipes,
Butter murukku
Sweet murukku
Ribbon pakoda
Murukku
Chakli

Preparation for thattai recipe

1. Wash and soak chana dal for 1 hour, drain it completely and set aside.

2. Roast urad dal or peanuts on a low to medium flame till golden. Cool completely. If using peanuts, then remove the skin.

3. Add roasted dal and fried gram to a blender jar. If using peanuts, first powder the fried gram very fine. Then add peanuts and make a coarse powder. You can also powder sesame seeds and use.

4. I used urad dal & fried gram so i made a fine powder together.

Making dough

5. Add rice flour, urad dal and fried gram flour, salt, red chili powder, drained chana dal and sesame seeds. Sometimes sesame seeds splutter while frying, so make sure they are lightly crushed.

6. Add curry leaves and butter.

7. Mix up gently to incorporate the butter and then add water little by little. Do not pour lot of water at one time.

8. Make a stiff and non sticky soft dough.

9. Divide the dough to 14 to 16 balls.

How to make thattai

10. Spread a dry cloth. Grease your fingers. Begin to make thattai by flattening the dough ball.

11. Flatten the dough as much as possible. You will see the balls begin to crack towards the edges. That is just fine, join up the cracks. Grease your fingers as needed. You can also flatten these with the base of a greased steel bowl or a greased lid. I am comfortable making these with fingers as the thattai turns out even with fingers.

12. Make these thin as shown in the picture. Too thin thattai will break while you lift and too thick ones will not turn crisp. So make them moderately thin.

13. Heat oil in a deep kadai. When the oil is hot enough, drop a small flat piece of dough to check if the oil is hot enough. The dough should come up and not sink to the bottom.

Slide thattai in the hot oil from the sides. Take cake while you slide it. Flip and fry on both sides until golden. You can fry more than one thattai at one time if there is enough space in the kadai.

14. The bubbles begin to reduce when they are well fried. Drain them to a kitchen towel. Cool them completely. They will look very oil as soon as you remove them from oil but then nothing much would be on the surface or in the thattai.

Storing thattai

Now comes the very important part of storing them well. Not only the method of preparing thattai even the way they are stored is very important to keep them fresh and crispy for many days.

Do use a clean and moisture free air tight container. I use air tight stainless steel containers to store thattai, chakli, murukku.

Do not leave them too long to the air/fan/ air con once they are cooled down. As soon as you notice them cooled transfer them to the jar.

Thattai should be completely cool before moving to the jar. These keep good for 2 weeks.

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