Hello everyone! Today I'm going to share some pictures I took while I was making murukku for the upcoming Deepavali festival. It falls on the 8th of November which is next week.
Murukku is a crunchy and savoury snack that is made to celebrate the Deepavali festival. It is made of rice flour and roasted gram flour. Many people tailor it to their own preferences. Some use oil while some use ghee, and some use both in the ingredients. We can also add carom seeds, sesame seeds, cumin seeds and salt for more flavour.
My mother made the murukku dough while I prepared the baking paper. I'll be pressing the dough through a mould into these papers so it's easier to transfer them later into the wok for deep frying. I cut them into squares like these and made almost 30 pieces. I needed many of them because I'll probably go through them fast as I have to still be able to make them while my mother starts frying the first half of them in the kitchen.
This is how the mould looks like. There is another type which is more traditional one but that is much harder to use due to how heavy it is even before putting the mould in. So in this mould, I have to keep turning the long thing around in order to make coils of the murukku. We use the star mould as it's a little more aesthetic than the simpler looking round mould.
This is me in the midst of making them. That's my pet fish at the back. He was a little angry as he is a very social type of fish and wanted me to get to him. If I don't acknowledge him from time to time, he would get angry and knock the glass to get my attention. Isn't the second picture looking funny like the mould is on top of his head and he is looking at it? The third picture is a murukku that I was almost done with.
I actually enjoy making them as round as possible. I had three trays set up so I can keep rotating them. One was used to place the baking papers while the other two were on rotation as I use one to make them while the other will be in the kitchen as my mother fries them.
This is how my mother deep fries them. She uses a long metal to turn them around to ensure that they're fried well. Then she gets them off the hot oil and let's them drain for a while before placing them on kitchen towels to further drain some oils. The process of frying them is hard too as the person has to be in the heaty kitchen for a long time and it can be tedious too as it's a constant ongoing process.
Presenting to you some crispy murukku. They are all the same but the first picture was taken by me in the kitchen in a rush as I had to get back to making them. While the others were taken by my father in the living room with better lighting.
Since we made many of them, I wanted to share all their pictures. My mother arranged all of them in these containers. She wanted them in tower shape so they look neatly arranged. That is a lot of murukku but we will probably only keep one jar for us. The rest will be shared to our friends, family and neighbours. We usually exchange some snacks with relatives when we meet up for Deepavali.
My advance wishes to everyone! I also just realized that it is Halloween today. Happy Halloween everyone! Thank you for dropping by and have a spooky, fun Halloween day.