Sweet Beetroot Puris – Hidden Veggie Flatbread

Puris are tasty, but not really healthy as foods go. To add a touch of healthiness to the deep-fried Indian flatbreads, make these beetroot puris.

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Puris or pooris always taste yummy! Give someone a choice between bread and puris, and most Indians will any-day pick puris.

What are puris? Puris are deep-fried Indian bread that are made using whole wheat flour without any leavening agent such as baking powder or yeast. Puris can be eaten for breakfast, or as a snack, or as the bread component of any meal.

They’re most popularly eaten with batata bhaji which is a vegetable dish featuring potatoes or chole masala or chana masala which is a spicy curry-type dish made with chickpeas. Puris are also eaten with the popular Indian sweet dish made from hung curd that’s called shrikhand.

Puris are tasty, but not really healthy as foods go. So if you want to add in a touch of healthiness to your puris to make yourself feel a little better, do what my mom does for us. Add some hidden veggies, in this case crushed beetroot to the mixture. This brightly-colored hidden-beetroot flatbread is also a good way to get the kids to eat beetroot if they don’t normally like them.

My sis doesn’t like beetroots in salads or other dishes, but she’ll eat a beetroot puri any day. So there’s a plus point! Oh, and another plus point; beetroots are inherently sweet, so the puris taste sweeter and kids love them and don’t make a fuss about the hidden veggies.

What do you put in Beetroot Pooris?

Well, beetroots of course. You just add them to the regular puri dough and work as you usually do. So the ingredients are: wheat flour, 2 beetroots – skinned, boiled, and chopped into 1-inch squares or mashed directly, salt, oil, Optional – ajwain (ova or carom seeds), oil for deep frying the puris and
water – as needed.

How to make beetroot puris?

Assuming you already know how to make pooris, here’s what to do to make our beetroot pooris.

Wash and boil 2 beetroots for about 30 minutes or till they’re soft. Skin the beetroots and chop them roughly into 1-inch squares. Mash them with a potato masher or in the mixie and set aside. In the picture above, we’ve actually made a mash of 4 beetroots.

We use half the beetroot mash for this poori recipe and the other half for the beetroot hummus that we make on the same day. It’s not that difficult, just add beetroot to your homemade hummus.

In a thali (large flat pan), take about 250 grams of wheat flour, beetroot mash, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1 tablespoon oil and mix well together. Most likely, you won’t need to add any water, since the beetroot mash has enough of water content in it. But if you need to, add a few tablespoons of water at a time, and knead to form a stiff dough.

Cover the dough with a wet cloth and set aside. If you can’t be bothered to massage the dough, and want an easy pour and fry bread recipe, try making some gluten-free chitaps.

Make 8 to 12 portions of the dough and roll into balls. The size of the balls can be small or big depending on whether you want big or small puris. Smaller puris look nice, but they take more of your precious time.

Now here’s a trick we learned from Kanta, our aunt’s maid, who also taught us how to make a yummy murgh kasuri chicken curry. Instead of rolling out small 4 or 5-inch-sized puris, roll out a few large chappati-sized puris. That’s about 7 or 8 inches in diameter. Once you’ve rolled it out, cut it into 4 or 6 pie-shaped quarters and fry them. Saves time, and makes the puris look different.

When you fry a beetroot poori in hot oil, it will puff up and fill with air. Turn it over for a few minutes and fry till slightly brown, or till the sides turn brown.

Use a skimmer spoon to remove the pooris from the oil, so that the oil drains out. A skimmer spoon is a sieve-like spoon that’s used in cooking where you want to separate solids from the liquids. In India, we call the skimmer spoon a jhara.

Add the pooris to an insulated casserole and cover. You might want to line the casserole with kitchen towels aka tissue paper to absorb the excess oil before adding the puris here. And that’s it for your easy beetroot puris recipe! Your yummy beet puris are ready to eat. 🙂

Serve these beetroot-flavored Indian flatbreads with your favorite batata bhaji, or shrikhand, or beetroot-flavored hummus, or cabbage veggies, or some yummy chicken curry. Pooris go well with some sorpotel too!

Other variations of Indian puris that Include Veggies

Palak Puris: Replace the beetroot in this recipe with about 200 grams of pureed palak.

Cabbage Puris: Replace the beetroot in this recipe with about 200 grams of minced cabbage.

Questions About Beetroot Puris

What If The Beetroot Puri Doesn’t Puff Completely?

If your beetroot puri does not puff, don’t worry; it is still cooked.

How Can I Make The Puris Softer?

If you want softer puris, replace each tablespoon of oil with 2 tablespoons of yogurt or 2 tablespoons of milk cream.

Are Indian Puris Gluten-Free?

No, Indian puris are not gluten-free because they are made of whole wheat flour. If you want gluten-free puris, use buckwheat flour.

What Are The Different Types Of Rotis In India?

There are many types of rotis in India that are cooked using different methods – leavened, unleavened, fried, baked, deep-fried, and steamed. Some of them include naans, parathas, rotis, makai rotis, bajri rotis, kuchlas, idlis, appams, ghavnis, chitaps, rotla, bhakri, puris, bathura, khakra, koki, dosa, rava dosa, neer dosa, masala dosa, phulka, thepla, papad, pitha, kori roti, rumali roti, and many more.

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