Rainy Day Desi Snacks: 7 Fried and Tangy Plates With Chai

The sky goes grey and everyone wants something fried

There is a specific craving that arrives with rain in South Asia: hot, crisp, salty, with a green chutney and a cup of tea. The pakoray recipe on this site describes it as the go-to teatime snack on rainy days. You do not need to live in a monsoon climate to have it. A wet Sunday in Manchester or Minneapolis does the job.

Below are seven rainy day desi snacks from our recipe library, grouped by how much work they are. Each page has metric and US amounts and a servings scaler.

Fry-it-now snacks (about 30 minutes)

Pakoray are the benchmark. 250 g (2 cups) gram flour, 2 sliced onions, a potato, 2 green chillies, a little turmeric, red chilli and 0.5 teaspoon carom seeds (ajwain), mixed into a thick batter with just enough water. Frying takes about 15 minutes for 4 people with 500 ml (2 cups) oil. The batter should coat the vegetables, not drown them. If it looks like pancake batter, add more gram flour. Our pakora batter guide covers the crisp-not-oily details.

Beguni is the Bengali version with eggplant. One eggplant sliced about half a centimetre (0.2 inch) thick, rested 10 minutes with salt, dipped in a spiced gram flour batter with nigella seeds (kalonji), and fried about 6 minutes. Thin slices are the point: the recipe notes that they cook through in the same time the coating takes to crisp.

Piyazu are Bangladeshi lentil and onion fritters: 200 g (1 cup) soaked lentils, 2 onions, 3 green chillies, ginger, cumin and coriander. Keep the batter thick. A loose batter soaks up oil and will not hold its shape.

Vada pav is the Mumbai street snack: spiced mashed potato balls in a gram-flour coat, fried about 5 minutes and tucked into a bread roll. The recipe serves 4 with 4 potatoes, 150 g (5.3 oz) gram flour and 8 pieces of bread. Fry a few whole green chillies in the same oil for the side bite.

No-fry snacks for when the oil feels like too much

Samosa chaat is the fast one: 2 or 3 crushed samosas per plate (buy them frozen or fresh), topped with 200 g (1 cup) chickpeas, onion, tomato, 150 g (0.65 cup) yogurt, tamarind water and chaat masala. It serves 3 and takes 10 minutes of cooking, mostly warming. The tamarind water needs about 10 minutes of soaking.

Chana chaat uses 300 g (1.75 cups) boiled chickpeas, onion, tomato, chilli, coriander, lemon and chaat masala. Squeeze the lemon on at the last minute, or the salad turns watery.

Masala chai is the other half of the plate. For 2 cups: 300 ml (1.3 cups) milk, 2 teaspoons tea, ginger, 3 cardamom pods, a cinnamon piece, 2 cloves and 2 tablespoons sugar. Boil the whole spices in water first, then add tea, then milk. The recipe warns that boiling too long after the milk goes in turns the cup bitter.

Frying safely on a wet afternoon

Hot oil on a stove is where most kitchen accidents happen, so a few plain rules.

• Use a deep, heavy pan with the oil no more than half full. 500 ml (2 cups) is the amount in our pakoray recipe, so a small deep pan works.
• Test the oil with one drop of batter. It should rise and sizzle steadily within a few seconds. If it sinks and sits, the oil is too cool. If it browns at once, too hot. A deep-fry thermometer should read roughly 170 to 180 C (340 to 355 F) for fritters.
• Do not crowd the pan. Overcrowding drops the temperature and makes fritters oily. Fry in batches.
• Keep water away from hot oil. Dry the potato and onion, and never throw a wet ladle in.
• Lower food in gently and keep children away from the stove. If the pan catches fire, cover it with a lid and turn off the heat. Do not use water.

A serving plan for six people

1. Start the chai base first. Spices boil for about 4 minutes while you mix batter.
2. Batter and chutney together: the batter wants a few minutes of rest, and the green chutney (mint, coriander, chilli, lemon) can be blended while it sits.
3. Fry pakoray in two or three batches. Keep finished ones on a rack over a tray, not on paper towels, so they do not go soft from trapped steam.
4. Assemble the samosa chaat last, at the table, because it goes limp within minutes.
5. Serve everything at once on a shared tray. The point is to eat while it is hot.

What to buy for a rainy Saturday

Gram flour (besan), 2 to 3 onions, 2 potatoes, an eggplant, green chillies, a bunch each of coriander and mint, a lemon, a can or 300 g of dried chickpeas, thick yogurt, tamarind paste, chaat masala, tea leaves, whole cardamom, and cooking oil.

When you want to check what you already have before shopping, Degchi lets you mark staples as Have, Low or Out, and a small try-it pantry sits on the home page. For a rainier, heavier dinner after the snacks, the khichuri rainy-day recipe is the natural next step.