R100Baked Ethakka Appam
Pazham pori out of the oven, and what that costs
Photograph: Adobe Stock · representative of the dish
Plan ahead: plus 8 hours soaking — required.
The re-engineeringThis is the deep-fried mixture from the tea-shop jar, rebuilt as an oven-roasted one. Six grams of oil across the whole batch — under a gram a portion — instead of the 30–40 g a fried mixture absorbs. And it states a portion weight, because a mixture with no portion is a mixture you eat until it is gone.
Black chickpeas are the highest-fibre pulse in the Kerala repertoire by a wide margin: 25.2 g per 100 g, against 15.2 g in chana dal and 11.5 g in vanpayar. Soaked and roasted they go from a curry ingredient to something you eat with your fingers, and a 35 g portion carries 6 g of protein and 8 g of fibre for 116 kcal. That is the best satiety-per-calorie snack in this book. The portion is the whole recipe, so weigh it the first six times.
Before you start: The chickpeas must be dried thoroughly after soaking. Wet chickpeas steam rather than roast and come out leathery, and no extra oven time fixes it.
Roasted Kadala Mix
Active 20 minutes Total 1 hour 5 minutes
Scale
245 servings
Ingredients — tap to tick off
- ✓200 g (1 cup) black chickpeas (kadala), soaked 8 hours in plenty of water, then drained
- ✓6 g (1¼ tsp) sesame (gingelly) oil
- ✓4 g (¾ tsp) Kashmiri chilli powder
- ✓2 g (⅓ tsp) ground turmeric
- ✓2 g (⅓ tsp) salt
- ✓30 g (⅓ cup) fresh coconut, sliced into thin chips
- ✓10 g (about 5 sprigs) curry leaves, stripped
- ✓3 g (½ tsp) M06 low-sodium all-purpose podi, to finish
Allergens: Sesame. Gluten (wheat) — only if your asafoetida is compounded with wheat flour, as most brands are (it arrives with M06).
Equipment: Oven; large baking tray; clean tea towel. Substitute: an air fryer at 180°C (350°F) for 20–24 minutes, shaken every 6 minutes, in two batches. A heavy pan on the hob also works and needs near-constant stirring for 20–25 minutes.
Method — tap a step to mark it done, tap a time to start a timer
- Soak the chickpeas or overnight, in at least three times their volume of water. They will roughly double in weight.
- Drain and spread them on a tea towel, patting the top dry and leaving them until the skins look matt rather than shiny.
- Heat the oven to 190°C (375°F).
- Toss the chickpeas with the oil, chilli powder, turmeric and salt until every one is coated and faintly orange.
- Roast on the tray in a single layer, shaking it every , for , until the chickpeas are dry and hard to the fingernail, rattle on the tray, and one crushed between the teeth snaps rather than yields. If they still bend, give them more and check again.
- Add the coconut chips and curry leaves for the last only, tossing once. Both burn in the time the chickpeas need, and both are done when the coconut is pale gold and the leaves crumble between finger and thumb.
- Cool completely on the tray, . Warm chickpeas taste chewy and soften a sealed jar; cold ones are properly crisp.
- Toss with the M06 podi and store. Adding the podi to warm chickpeas makes it clump.
Why this worksSoaking hydrates the starch so it gelatinises during roasting, and long dry heat then drives out enough water for the chickpea to go glassy and brittle — a texture frying reaches faster and at four times the fat. The fibre is the point: 8 g a portion, in a pulse, doing volume, satiety and glycaemic work at once. Pulses at 130 g a day lowered body weight by 0.34 kg in pooled trials.
Sourcing note
Black chickpeas are sold as kala chana, kadala or "brown chickpeas" in every South Asian grocery and in most supermarkets now. Ordinary white chickpeas work and give a softer, less nutty result with about 10 g less fibre per 100 g. Do not use tinned chickpeas — they are already cooked soft and will not crisp. Fresh coconut chips are worth the trouble; desiccated coconut burns before it colours.
If you are watching…
Blood sugar: 13 g of net carbohydrate against 8 g of fibre, in a pulse. This is the snack in the book with the best case behind it, and it works best eaten around 4pm in place of something fried rather than in addition to it.
Blood pressure: 120 mg a portion, from 2 g of salt across the batch. Halve the salt and lean on the M06 and it drops to about 65 mg. Commercial fried mixtures are a different order of magnitude and the reason ICMR-NIN's 2024 guidance names salted snacks specifically.
Cholesterol: 2 g of saturated fat a portion, all from the coconut chips. Leave them out and it falls to under 0.5 g, at a real cost to the flavour.
Swap it
White chickpeas for black → Consequence: softer, milder, and fibre falls from 8 g to about 5 g a portion.
Coconut oil for sesame → Consequence: the tea-shop smell, and saturated fat up from 2 g to about 3 g a portion.
Add 40 g of roasted peanuts after cooling → Consequence: better as a mixture, more monounsaturated fat, and about 25 kcal more per portion. (Allergen: this swap introduces peanuts.)
Fried, as the tea shop makes it → Consequence: roughly 30–40 g of absorbed oil across the batch, so about 45 kcal and 4 g more fat a portion, and a crunch the oven does not quite reach.
Skip the M06 and use 1 g more salt → Consequence: simpler, and sodium rises from 120 mg to about 175 mg a portion for no gain in flavour.
Scale it
At 400 g use two trays and swap shelves halfway, or the lower tray stays leathery. Oil does not scale linearly; a fuller tray needs proportionally less.
Make ahead · store · freeze
Cupboard 2 weeks in a genuinely airtight jar, and they soften noticeably by week three in a humid kitchen. Fridge 6 weeks — the better option in Kerala, or anywhere above 25°C (77°F). Freeze 4 months; they thaw crisp in 10 minutes on the counter and this is the best way to keep a large batch. Refresh any batch that has gone soft in a 160°C (325°F) oven for 6–8 minutes and cool completely.
Leftovers
Troubleshooting
Leathery rather than crisp: not dried after soaking, or pulled from the oven too early. Return them for 8–10 minutes.
Burnt coconut and leaves: they went in at the start rather than in the last 5–6 minutes.
Soft after three days: the jar is not airtight, or they were jarred warm. Refresh in the oven and cool completely.
Hard as gravel: over-roasted by 10 minutes or more, or the chickpeas were old. Old pulses never soften properly, in a curry or here.
Serve with
R106 Chai · R107 Sambharam · R099 Carrot and Coconut Raita · R100 Baked Ethakka Appam, if one sweet thing is wanted alongside
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