My son, Devansh, came home from school one day with this namkeen, dry puri in his tiffin. One of his classmates had got these puris in his tiffin and Devansh got it home to show it to me. “You tell his mamma to give it in his tiffin again tomorrow.”, he tells me. “I am doing no such thing, but I can make them for you.”, I reply. And then as usual “Google Maharaj ki Jai”. I don’t remember how I landed up with searches showing wheat flour mathri recipe because I had not heard the word “mathri” till then, but boy am I glad I did. Because not just Devansh, my whole family loved these namkeen mathris. I kept some aside for Devansh’s tiffin and we polished off the rest in no time.
This time when I made the mathris, I thought of using cookie cutters to give them fun shapes. This effort was mainly for the blog I must confess, we loved the round mathris just as much. I saw quite a few mathri recipes had maida (refined flour) as an ingredient. It probably makes the mathris harder and helps them last longer, I am guessing. But I am OK with these crispy, wheat flour mathris lasting me lesser number of days; I prefer to not use maida in my cooking.
These mathris serve well as a tiffin snack, or evening snacks for kids. You can also serve these to your guests with tea. Give this namkeen snacks recipe a try and let me know how you like it.
Steps by step photo instructions for making Mathri
Mathri recipe
Ingredients
- 1 cup wheat flour
- 1/4th cup rava semonlina/suji
- 1/4th cup oil
- 1/3rd tsp ajwain carom seeds
- 1/2 tsp jeera
- 1/3rd tsp black pepper powder
- 1/3rd tsp red chili powder optional
- salt to taste
Instructions
- Take wheat flour, rava, jeera powder, black pepper powder, and salt in a big mixing bowl. (You can use whole cumin seeds and coarsely crushed black peppercorns instead of their powders. Since I was making these mathris for my son who wouldn’t like them whole, I used powdered ones.)
- Crush the ajwain slightly between your palms and add it to the mixing bowl. (You can also add red chili powder to this mixture. I didn’t add because black pepper powder and ajwain make the mathris a bit spicy, and I didn’t want to make them more spicy as I was making them for my son.)
- Use a spoon or your hand to mix the ingredients in the bowl properly and then add oil. (Keep 1-2 tbsp oil aside.)
- Add very little water and knead a stiff dough. (You will need less than 1/4th cup of water.)
- Add the remaining oil and make a smooth ball of dough.
- Dust the chakla or platform with wheat flour, and roll out the dough to form a big, thick circle. (If you want to make circular mathris with uneven edges, make around 20 lemon-sized balls, and roll out 20 puris/mathris separately.)
- Insert cookie cutters in the rolled out dough to cut mathris in different shapes. (After cutting all mathris, make a ball of the remaining dough and make more mathris out of that dough.)
- Use a fork to poke holes in the mathris from both sides. (This will ensure that the mathris remain flat while frying. In one batch of mathris, I forgot to poke holes from one side and mathris in that batch puffed up from that side.)
- Heat oil in a frying pan, and then add 4-5 mathris. (Since we want the mathris to become hard, the oil shouldn’t be too hot.)
- Turn over the mathris a few times and keep frying on medium-low heat till they turn golden brown.
- Transfer the mathris on a plate lined with paper towel to absorb excess oil.
- Store the mathris in an airtight container to ensure they don’t become soft.
