Week 8 Pokara / or Pokara
For week 8 I tried a snack called Pokora. This is my favorite snack. We cannot get this snack in Regina even in any of the Indian stores. I tried this years ago but it was not as crispy as I wanted. As I am doing a project on cooking I thought that I could try this recipe following the instructions given in Swasthi’s recipe. When I read her post I thought to make it as as crunchy as possible. I am writing step-by-step instructions and tell you at the end of my cooking whether it came out as crunchy as I wanted. There are varieties of pokara like onion pokoda, cauliflower pokoda, cabbage pokoda, sweet corn pokoda, and chicken pokora.
For the class purpose, I choose to make Onion pokara. Before making I read Swathi’s recipes Pro tips on how to make crispy Onion pokara. The main ingredient was gram flour. According to her pro tips gram flour should be a of good quality so i went to the superstore and bought a few good quality Sheer besan flour. The next tip was to slice onions uniformly into thin slices. Another tip was to keep the oil temperature hot but not too hot as to burn the Pokaras and when frying pakoras it should be a medium-high flame.
Keeping all these tips in mind I started to first mix all the ingredients together with the onion.
- One and a half cup gram flour
- One tablespoon cornstarch
- 2 cups of onion
- Finely chopped ginger
- 2 green chillies shopped
In the first step I mixed all the ingredients together as the flour was too dry I had to sprinkle a little water to mix the ingredients. I set it aside for the onion moisture to stick with the flour. Then I heated the oil pan and made little balls of Pokaras and deep fried in oil and was careful that the Pokaras did not get burnt.
It worked out well, and it was crunchy to eat. This was the first time I had ever had crunchy pokora, as I followed the tips very carefully. I loved this snack and worked out well and crunchy. This is our traditional food and we make it in winter especially similar to french fires in Canada.
Step-by-step method in YouTube.