My Nani’s Delicious Vegetable Bhajia (Pakora) Recipe

Since I filmed my Nani’s homemade biscuit recipe with her, I’ve had so many comments, messages, DM’s and tweets asking me to film some more videos with my gran. It’s only taken me 3 years (sorry), but I finally managed to rope her into sharing another one of her recipes 😉

These vegetable bhajia are incredibly moreish and taste even better with the delicious chutney she makes. (We filmed a separate video for that which will be up this Sunday).

The ingredients for the vegetable bhajia aren’t accurate as my Nani, in true indian style, eyeballs everything and doesn’t use actual measurements. You can add any vegetables you like to these and change it up each time you make them!

Vegetable Bhajia (Pakora) Recipe

Ingredients:

2 and a half cups of rice

2 potatoes

4 carrots

4 courgettes – peeled

150g chopped spinach

Small white cabbage

Handful of coriander

Gram flour – approx 300-400g 

4-5 fresh chillies (add more to taste)

3/4 tsp turmeric

3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2tbsp lemon juice

Salt to taste

Sunflower oil for deep frying

Method:

Boil the rice and wait for it to cool down.

Peel the potatoes, carrots and courgettes and whizz them up in a food processor along with the cabbage.

Add all of the other ingredients (minus the sunflower oil) to the rice and other vegetables. Keep adding gram flour until the consistency of the mixture becomes relatively thick. We used approximately 400g to form a smooth batter that is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.

Set the mixture aside for 10-15 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a deep pan.

When the oil is hot, use two tablespoons to grab and roughly shape the batter (you’ll be able to see this better in the video) and carefully lower tablespoons of the batter mixture in small batches into the oil.

Fry for 5-6 minutes, or until the vegetable bhajia/pakoras are crisp and golden-brown.

Serve immediately.

If you do make these, then please send me a photo! My gran loved seeing people all over the world recreating her biscuits and reading everyone’s messages about how they bought back lots of childhood memories! If you haven’t see that video, you can watch it here.