Quarantine times called for desperate phone calls for Mom’s recipes. I was scheduled to go to India and relax, sit in a place and eat my mom’s food, uninterrupted. But, life had different plans and being homebound with toddlers, constantly figuring out what to eat had me call my mom at odd hours of the day asking her what she had cooked and how I could cook it.
All these years, Mom has been sending me her infamous crispy, biscuit like Matris with anyone who is coming from India. They are lip-smacking delicious and I enjoy snacking on them in the middle of the night or early morning with a cup of coffee. We rarely eat fried foods at home, but these are certainly an exception to the rule. They are totally binge-worthy and loved by my toddlers too!
Since I have no idea when I will be able to visit India in the near future, I ended up calling her and getting a detailed explanation of how I could replicate the goodies. The detailed explanation of an indian mom always includes ‘andaaze se’.. Basically you are just supposed to ‘estimate it’. Their 1 cup is not really 1 cup, it is a steel bowl or a fistful of something.
However, I managed to crack the recipe and have captured it below for you to try and enjoy! I tweaked them just a little to make them a little more nutrient dense. Let me know how it turned out 🙂
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Nutritious Homemade Crispy Matris
- Total Time: 25 minutes
- Yield: 20–25 pieces 1x
Description
Crispy, crumbly, salty, whole wheat flour biscuits enjoyed with tea or coffee. Also, makes a filling, nutritious on-the-go snack for kids and adults.
Ingredients
- ½ cup Whole Wheat Flour
- 1 tbsp All-purpose Flour
- ½ tsp Carom seeds (Ajwain)
- ½ tsp Salt
- ½ tbsp Hemp Seeds (optional)
- 1–2 tbsp melted Ghee
- Water
- 1–2 cups Oil
Instructions
- Combine all the dry ingredients.
- Add a tbsp of ghee and mix well. Try to see if you can loosely bind it. If not, add a little more ghee to ensure that the flour base is nice and crumbly to begin with.
- Add little water at a time to form a stiff dough. When you make an indent in the dough, it should not be too deep or pliable. This is the key to making a crumbly biscuit that is easy to roll as well. Cover with a damp cloth for 10 mins.
- Heat the oil in a small saucepan on low heat.
- Divide the rested dough in 4 portions. Take 1 portion and keep the other 3 covered.
- Start rolling out the portion with a pin until it is 1/4th inch thick. Make sure the thickness is even throughout.
- Now, pierce the rolled dough with a fork to prevent any puffing up during frying.
- Then, using a cookie cutter start cutting the dough. Any cookie cutter will do, I prefer the biscuits or matris to be bite-sized, so prefer an approximately 2 inches cookie cutter.
- Take the remaining dough and merge it with the 2nd portion. Roll, cut, repeat until you have all the pieces/biscuits/matris ready to be fried.
- Turn the heat on medium-low. The oil should not be burning hot when you put in the matris. Fry in batches 7-8 pieces at a time. Each batch should take about 2-3 mins to brown evenly. **See notes for heat temperature details.
- Line a plate with a paper towel, and place the fried matris, so that the excess oil can be absorbed.
- Once cool enough to handle, store in an air-tight box at room temperature for 3-4 weeks.
- Enjoy with Raw mango pickle (Indian achar) or by itself with a cup of tea or coffee.
Notes
- If they are browning too quickly, that means the oil is very hot and the matris will be very crumbly and soft. If the oil is on the cooler side, the matris will be extra crispy and a little tough to bite into.
- If the oil is too hot, consider turning the heat down to simmer when you are taking out the fried batch and putting in the new ones.
- You can add any other spices you like, like ginger, garlic, chilli powder to make like masala matris. The recipe above is what is typically made at home.
- Prep Time: 10
- Cook Time: 15
- Category: Snack
- Method: Stovetop
- Cuisine: Indian
Keywords: Matri, Mathri, Matris, Mathris, Homemade Matri, Marwari Matri, Marwadi Matri, Rajasthani Matri, Indian snack, Whole wheat snack, whole wheat biscuit, atta snacks, atta chat, quick indian snack, nutritious snack, fried snack, kid-friendly snack, travel snacks
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